"We have to be one team, one New Brunswick, one Saint John," said Minister Carr.
Saint John’s financial sustainability report was subject to some scrutiny during Mayor Don Darling’s third Budget and Beers event last night.
Darling outlined his concerns with the “Sustaining Saint John” report.
He says the financial help doesn’t come soon enough, and the city is facing $10 to $12 million dollars in cuts by 2020.
“Without closing the gaps, cuts will be deep,” said Darling.
The town hall drew a large crowd last night, including Local Government Minister Jeff Carr. He has been working hard to get the city to accept the “Sustaining Saint John” report.
Carr says he is very serious about making this plan work for Saint John.
“We are fully committed to municipal reform, and like I said earlier, we are as committed to passing the three part action plan as we were committed to balancing the budget,” he told reporters after the meeting.
During the event, he proposed a meeting with councillors and MLA’s to get everyone on the same page.
“I think it’s important to be in the room as one team with the appropriate people to explain the pieces of the action plan, so we can all champion it together. If there’s some tweaks, if there’s some quick hits that we can take on in the short term, let’s find them,” he said.
“We have to be one team, one New Brunswick, one Saint John.”
Making Changes
Darling says one change he wants to see in the plan is heavy industry tax reform, which he says could bring the city $9 million in revenue.
But the province has said it won’t budge on that just yet, and is focused instead on changing timelines and other means of savings.
Another possible tweak that was discussed with Premier Blaine Higgs and finance committee chair David Merrithew last week would be to make sure property tax assessment are accurate.
“If they aren’t assessed properly, lets make sure they are,” said Carr.
During the meeting, Merrithew mentioned that the Irving rail car depot is currently assessed at a lower value than the Tim Horton’s off the causeway, which drew laughs and sighs of exasperation from the crowd.
Since the report was tabled back in July, Darling says the ongoing conversations and cooperation have him feeling a lot more confident.
“I’m more confident because the Premier of this province has said ‘I’m going to step in and I’m going to do something here for Saint John.’ I’m more confident tonight because we had multiple ministers and MLA’s in the room, so I think we’re moving in the right direction, but at the end of the day we need to see that in writing,” he said.
“We’re very flexible as council on what the solutions are to bridge the gap, very flexible.”
Darling and Carr meet Friday to discuss where tweaks can be made in the report.
They both agree that timelines can be tightened up in order to find Saint John more money sooner.
