Our Mayor and Council are being disingenuous in their easy decision to raise our property taxes. Their refusal to question members of the senior government (provincial and federal) about equalization fairness and what happens to over $600 million in the one category generated by this exact municipal problem. Our municipality seem to be fine with receiving only $15 million out of $2.803 billion that Nova Scotia receives yearly. Half the council voted to raise our taxes and half voted against it! It looks like the mayor was the deciding vote and of course, she voted to raise our property taxes instead of calling out the provincial government for their lack of funding, that we generate. It seems that our mayor and council are playing party politics and safe guarding their future political aspirations…..Liberals against the Tory’s and as usual, we the residents of the CBRM, will pay the price. Why would the CBRM pay almost double the property taxes of the HRM. They have everything up there at their fingertips and the very best public services and meanwhile, we in the CBRM and the rest of rural Nova Scotia, pay much higher property taxes and we are starved of the good roads, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. while we watch our municipality sink further with increasing taxation. Here is what was published today in the Cape Breton Post: SYDNEY — Cape Breton Regional Municipality councillors who voted either for or against a general tax rate hike say as tough a choice as it was, they still stand by their choices. The June 27 council meeting aiming to settle the operations portion of the 2023-24 municipal budget came down to a narrow 7-6 vote to approve a $174-million operating budget, which included a 3.5 per cent base tax rate increase and a minimum tax levy increase to $575. Favouring the recommendations were councillors Earlene MacMullin (District 2), Steve Gillespie (District 4), Eldon MacDonald (District 5), Ken Tracey (District 9), Darren Bruckschwaiger (District 10), Darren O’Quinn (District 11) and Mayor Amanda McDougall-Merrill. Councillors Gordon MacDonald (District 1), Cyril MacDonald (District 3), Glenn Paruch (District 6), Steve Parsons (District 7), Deputy Mayor James Edwards (District 😎 and Lorne Green (District 12) all voted against it. In the weeks that followed the vote, Gillespie said he didn’t get too many constituents phoning him on his decision. “But I did get feedback what I call the ‘keyboard warriors’ or people who don’t know exactly what the issues really were,” he said. “What they don’t realize is the amount of work that council and senior staff put into this.” Budget workshops began during the winter months, followed by public consultations and then the in-council deliberations during the spring, he said. “All that time we went through every single line, inch by inch, to try and figure out what to do here,” Gillespie said. From the early stages, chief financial officer Jennifer Campbell warned there would be a shortfall in the operating budget, starting from an estimated $8 million and reduced to $4.2 million by the time deliberations began in April. Campbell also reiterated that the one-time $15-million municipal capacity grant top-up the province gave to CBRM last year would not be renewed for this fiscal year, despite some attempts to see if any other provincial funding help could be obtained. Combined with costs associated with damage done from post-tropical storm Fiona, along with increases in property assessments that affected the five per cent rate decrease council approved last year, that put CBRM council and staff in a bind as to what else might need cutting. All told for CBRM residents: Council’s overall vote means the general tax rate would go up 3.5 per cent this year, a transit tax would rise 12.5 cents per $100 of assessment for any properties with bus routes close by but there would be a lowering of a fire hydrant charge by two cents per $100 of assessment. Following a recent council meeting, the Cape Breton Post asked four district councillors how they felt about their vote either for or against the operating budget recommendations: STEVE GILLESPIE, DISTRICT 4, VOTED FOR “My vote (favouring the recommendations) was to help balance the budget. Without a balanced budget, we would have had to cut something. So I would say to people this: do we cut our police department? Our transit department? Our recreation department? Our fire department? “Or do we look at our budget and realize that without our provincial (municipal capacity grant) top-up from last year, we are in no position to do anything but this? “If there were better ideas that were out there, we would have come up with them by now. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. So I’m very comfortable with the fact that we had done this. “Every other level of government is allowed to run deficits. Municipalities, however, are not allowed. So we were left with no choice: this had to be done to balance the budget.” GLENN PARUCH, DISTRICT 6, VOTED AGAINST “I’ve gotten some feedback from residents that were happy with the way I voted. And my answer to them was that we worked so hard last year to get a deduction that I just didn’t feel that it was in the best interest of the residents to have a (tax rate) increase. “Now I know many of my colleagues argued for and against for how they wanted to vote. Myself, I would have preferred to have gone through the budget to find some more cuts — maybe cut a bit more of the services but at a rate where it wouldn’t totally affect things. “I think there are ways within the CBRM where we could clean up some of our spending habits on how we do it. “It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to go through with that (idea). But at the end of the day, it’s a democracy and we have to deal with the results.” DARREN BRUCKSCHWAIGER, DISTRICT 10, VOTED FOR “I’ve gotten so little feedback from my constituents. “I mean, once I explained where we were at fiscally last year — receiving that $15-million top-up from the province, with a guarantee that that would continue until the new memorandum of understanding was completed — and said how we got from that point to why we had to go back up to the 3.5 per cent increase this year, people in my district started saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that.’ “And they were satisfied having gotten that explanation. “Overall, our rate is still down 1.5 per cent two years later. But unfortunately, if a promise of that municipal capacity grant top-up (from the province) had been kept, we wouldn’t be having to make this tough decision. GORDON MACDONALD, DISTRICT 1, VOTED AGAINST “I’m pretty happy with my decision. I’ve been getting lots of calls that have been supportive. “For the calls I get from people who are irate and ticked off — and I get why they feel that way — here’s what I tell them: ‘Did you notice that tax rate decrease from last year?’ “They say, ‘a decrease? No.’ ‘Well, chances are you are not going to notice the increase for this year.’ And that’s where I leave it. “I mean, nobody wanted to see an increase in taxes. Even the councillors who voted for it only did it because their hands were tied, so to speak. It wasn’t an easy decision to make.”