Minister Jeff Carr held a technical briefing at the Nic-Nicolle Centre in Saint John on Tuesday, November 25th. (Danielle McCreadie)
The province says its plan to get Saint John’s finances back on track is moving forward.
The Sustaining Saint John Action Plan, released in the summer, includes 20 action items, many of which will be implemented in 2019, or are in the works for 2020.
Local government minister Jeff Carr says the biggest hurdle comes in the form of new regional cost-sharing legislation.
Saint John currently shares the net operating costs for facilities like TD Station and the Imperial Theatre with Rothesay, Quispamsis and Grand Bay-Westfield, but has shouldered capital costs on its own.
“We don’t think that just those four communities should be paying any longer,” said Carr.
The proposed changes would share the capital costs with more municipalities and force Hampton, St. Martins and several local service districts to contribute toward the capital and operating costs.
The new Regional Services legislation could provide around $632,000 in savings for the city of Saint John in 2021.
During a technical briefing on Tuesday, Carr said a lot of outlying communities are “angsty” about having to now pay operating and capital costs, and are worried about tax rate increases.
“A lot of the comments that they would have or that you would hear is that ‘Saint John has dug this whole on their own, we’re not helping them get out,” he said.
“There’s been contributions from some of the outlying communities…for 22 years, and we feel that if we’re going to remove some silos between communities and the region as a whole takes the ownership of these five, it just spreads the cost so it keeps it lower for everyone.”
“They have no choice, they have to make it work.”
Deputy Mayor Shirley MacAlary was also at Tuesday’s briefing. She says the city is looking forward to reaping the benefits of the new legislation.
“Everybody in the area uses those facilities, they have since the beginning, and we have shared the operating costs over the last 20 years or so. Once we get a formula in place…that will help the city at lot,” she said.
“All the regions around us will be asked to share at some point in time and they’re going to have their views on that of course. For us, we just have to wait and see what happens, because if we don;t get any extra from any direction, then that means that Saint John will have to reduce. We just don’t have enough money to balance our (2021) budget.”
Carr says while the exact numbers haven’t been nailed down yet, costs for Quispamsis, Rothesay, Grand Bay-Westfield and Saint John should theoretically drop.
Provincial officials said the new cost-sharing model would take effect for 2020.
Carr says he will be meeting with all the LSD’s before Christmas to answer any questions about the new legislation, and to also communicate what potential tax increases might look like.
He says all outlying communities will know cost-sharing increases before the numbers are made public. “I took them by surpise enough with the new legislation,” said Carr.
Working Together
A big piece of the three-part action plan is a Regional Management Task Force made up of the outlying community’s mayors. Their goal is to come up with regional cost-sharing models for the services and facilities.
Local government minister Jeff Carr says Task Force discussions haven’t been all that positive, but as times goes on he hopes they can cooperate.
“The project itself has to be bigger than any one person, than any one group in the room, and it has to succeed. I’m positive that they’ll get there. It takes time, it really takes time to bring communities together,” he said. “They have no choice, they have to make it work.”
Carr says Task Force now needs to be asking themselves how to optimize assets, and come up with a fair cost-sharing model.
“What do we really need in the region? Do we have too many facilities? Maybe there’s an opportunity at some point to take two or three of the older buildings and build one. Not every community can have an area anymore and I think people recognize that,” he said as an example.
The Task Force will give a status report to councils and the public in January of next year, and will have a completed cost-sharing agreement signed by March.
The province will also revisit the city’s finances in March 2020 to ensure it’s on the right track.
Carr is also standing by previous comments that the province will not be providing any more “bail-out” money for Saint John, but could potentially spread out the remaining funds from the New Deal over a few more years.
Updates From The Legislature
While the city continues to work on sustainability initiatives and planning their 2020 budget, the province is also moving forward with legislative training that will help Saint John.
“The accommodation levy, that’s done, that was a 2019 piece. The transit facilities, that one is coming. It may not happen in this calendar year but it’ll be there in the fiscal,” he said.
“Any of the amendments…that all really depends on what happens inside the Legislature in the end. I’ve worked hard on my piece to talk to the other parties. We still get questions from them because they want to be engaged, they want to understand.”
When it comes to heavy industry tax reform, Carr says the Law Amendment committee tabled a report on it earlier this month, but he isn’t sure what the recommendations in the report are. He doesn’t think there will be any major changes right away.
As for other legislation needed to make the action plan work, Carr says the pieces are in place.
