More than 200 municipal leaders from across Nova Scotia are gathering in Halifax to discuss the challenges facing their communities and governments. The annual Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM) conference will look at housing and infrastructure, municipal funding, and the relationship with provincial government. Town of Bridgewater Mayor David Mitchell, who is also the NSFM president, says there’s a real infrastructure and cost problem facing municipalities. “We’re not equally yoked with the other orders of government in terms of our revenue,” said Mitchell. Municipalities rely on property taxes to fund services and infrastructure, and Mitchell says that is no longer cutting it when it comes to meeting the costs. Mitchell says a municipality only receives $0.08 of every tax dollar a Canadian pays. The current tax and revenue systems leave them with few options for finding new revenue, especially when residents say they are already taxed out. “It’s not enough to do all the things we need to,” said Mitchell. “We do need to look at innovative ways of changing the revenue model for municipalities.” Yarmouth Mayor Pam Mood says financial pressure means municipalities like hers have to make difficult decisions to pay for what’s needed while putting off things they might want. “That’s tremendously difficult for an elected official,” said Mood. “We want everything for our municipal units and unfortunately we can’t have it all, unless we find a way to pay for it without tapping into more of our taxpayers.” Municipal leaders say the answer isn’t simply raising property taxes. They need a better tax model that includes revenues from other levels of government to fund local infrastructure projects like water and sewer services. “These are discussions that we haven’t had yet, but we need to have,” said Mitchell. For many municipal leaders, this conference is also an opportunity to share ideas and best practices around issues like parking, transit, poverty and homelessness. For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
