April 20, 2022 at 1:23 pm
CBRM council met on Tuesday to hash out details of its 5%, across-the-board tax cut but before they got into it, District 8 Councilor James Edwards moved that the cut be phased in over three years rather than introduced in one fell swoop. This led to a reprise of muchRead More
April 20, 2022 at 1:21 pm
Talk of big box retailers benefiting from CBRM’s recently announced 5% tax cut got me to googling and I discovered that these corporations have been getting quite creative in their attempts to reduce their assessments south of the border. I will preface this by saying that my “research” (which I’veRead More
April 13, 2022 at 12:25 pm
CBRM council voted on a 5%, across-the-board — residential and commercial — property tax cut this week. I think this chart, from the province’s Open Data portal, helps provide some perspective on this. It shows average Nova Scotia municipal residential property tax rates from 2009/10 to 2020/21. (It’s interactive, youRead More
April 13, 2022 at 12:23 pm
When we left off, CBRM District 8 Councilor James Edwards (who, as noted in Part I of this article on the CBRM tax cut, is a former Canada Revenue employee), was agreeing that he too, would like to pay less tax, but arguing that to be “fiscally responsible,” any reductionRead More
February 23, 2022 at 12:24 pm
Watching the February 16 presentation to CBRM council by staff of the Property Valuation Services Corporation (PVSC) I was struck by how often the presenters — Dave Penny, director of roll data and maintenance; Adam Hanna, assistant director of roll and data maintenance; and Lloyd MacLeod, director of assessment forRead More
February 23, 2022 at 12:21 pm
Welcome to Part II of what has turned into a two-part series based on the first half of a two-hour CBRM council budget workshop. Just me, working my magic, folks. Those rising Nova Scotia house prices described in Part I led to a 10.8% overall increase in residential assessments acrossRead More
February 23, 2022 at 12:15 pm
Finally we are seeing common sense being applied in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Darren Bruckschwaiger, Earlene MacMullin, Cyril MacDonald and Gordon MacDonald are using the God-given common sense that the CBRM taxpayers cannot afford higher taxes whether in the form of raising taxes or lifting the CAP. NowRead More
December 2, 2020 at 1:10 pm
I wrote about Nova Scotia’s Capped Assessment Program (CAP) for municipal property taxes at some length back in 2017, drawing heavily on a report on the subject commissioned by the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM) which would dearly love to throw the CAP high in the air, like MaryRead More
November 27, 2020 at 10:30 am
Ahem… Back in May of 2019, I wrote a story with the headline, “This is what a REAL port announcement looks like,” in which I contrasted what was happening at the Port of Québec — which had announced a deal with CN and Hatchet Ports to build and operate theRead More