Council Update: Banook Plan, CAP

Agenda December 9
Agenda December 2

Banook Plan
The Lake Banook Coordination Plan was approved by Council this week. Banook is a special place. It’s both a prized community recreational hub, and an international sporting venue. It’s a spot that large numbers of people enjoy for walking, swimming, and paddling, and it’s a place that puts HRM and Nova Scotia on the world stage. Making sure there is clear direction for its future that works for both uses is important. The new Banook Coordination Plan is a bit of an update and amalgamation of other plans that HRM has produced over the years into one current document. It considers all of the public spaces around the Lake and makes recommendations for how they could be improved to benefit both the paddling/rowing community and the public as a whole. So what’s in the Plan?

Henry Findlay Park
Of all the park space around Lake Banook, Henry Findlay Park was probably the spot with the most potential for conflict. During the 2022 World Sprint Championships, Henry Findlay was used as the athlete’s village, which meant closing the Park and temporarily removing the playground equipment. Henry Findlay was a much better site for the athlete’s village because it is much more accessible than Birch Cove. This allowed athletes and para-athletes to all share space for the first time. Canoe 22 organizers were thrilled. The Park closure, however, didn’t go unnoticed by the wider community and concerns were expressed about the loss of access and the removal of the playground. There are competing demands on this space!

As part of the new Plan, HRM considered whether the playground could be relocated, but concluded that relocation wasn’t a viable option because there just isn’t any other suitable space nearby and public feedback wasn’t supportive. In trying to balance the needs of both uses, HRM has identified that the playground will remain in Henry Findlay, but shift towards the northern end of the Park closer to the Banook Canoe Club. The playground won’t be removed during events like it was in 2022, but the Park might still be temporarily closed for periods of time.

With the playground concentrated on the northern end of the Park, the southern portion closer to Hawthorne Street can be more easily used for the athlete’s village. Being close to Hawthorne is important for the athlete’s village because HRM has identified that additional space can be closing the street during events. We can make the Henry Findlay Park pie bigger by taking over the street! This will provide enough space for the athlete’s village without having to remove the playground. HRM believes that with a more efficient layout and using Hawthorne Street, the two uses can coexist.

A new playground is being planned for Henry Findlay as the existing tot structure is at the end of its life and is due to be replaced. This is likely a 2026 project. Electrical upgrades, a drinking fountain and drainage improvements are also identified for future years.

Lions Beach
The Banook Plan has one big potential change for Lion’s Beach: a washroom. Lion’s Beach isn’t a supervised beach, but it is still a popular destination for swimmers, particularly families with young kids. Requests for a washroom at Lion’s has been a regular ask that has come my way over the years and so I wasn’t surprised that this ask came through strongly in the public engagement. I have wondered if a washroom in the parking lot at the end of Nowlan Street might be the best way to address this as washroom there would be about equal distance between the Sullivan’s Pond Bandstand, Lion’s, and the playground. The thought is it could be potentially useful for all three! I had pushed for a Lion’s/Sullivan’s/Findlay washroom to be included in HRM’s Washroom Strategy, but wasn’t successful at that time. I’m glad that HRM has taken a second look at this through the Banook Plan. It’s something that’s needed.

Although a washroom has made it into the Plan, the downside is washrooms are very expensive (they run over $700,000 each!). Due to the high potential cost, the Banook Plan identifies a Lion’s Beach washroom as a supplementary improvement to action when funds become available. Given the other more urgent items around the Lake and HRM’s current budgetary pressures, this isn’t going to be a project that moves quickly. The most likely path is some external partner or benefactor or special event funding emerges to reduce the financial challenge. If HRM weren’t paying for the cost alone, the project would likely get much more priority. Today’s victory is it’s at least in the program!

Birch Cove
No major changes are identified for Birch Cove. What’s in the Plan is more tweaks and adjustments to what’s already there. The Plan indicates that additional naturalization work should be done on some of the Park’s steep slopes, action taken to address invasive species that have been spreading into the Park, seating should be upgraded to be more accessible, repairs undertaken to the washroom, and lighting improved to meet new standards. Some upgrades to the washroom building are being planned for 2026.

Oakwood Park
No major changes are identified for Oakwood Park. The main item for Oakwood is to pave the upper footpath so that it can be used as an alternative walking route during events. The thought is that Oakwood Park could remain open during events if there was an alternative pathway separate from the event space. A drinking fountain is also recommended at Oakwood.

Brookdale Crescent Park
Over at Brookdale, the main recommendation is to fix the disconnected trail network. Previous plans have identified the need for a connection from Edenbank Terrace to Lakeside Terrace so that folks can more readily walk around the Lake. HRM would need to acquire property to make this connection and there has never been a willing seller to do that. Recent construction means that there is now a house and a large garage in the way and so the Plan doesn’t recommend HRM proceed with this idea. Instead, the municipality should prioritize street connections, including a sidewalk on Brookdale Crescent and crosswalks/sidewalks on Crichton Avenue. This is work that HRM would look to align with other road work. HRM should also look to improve the rocky banks of the Circ through naturalization to reduce environmental pressures on the Lake.

Grahams Grove Park
Grahams Grove Park has seen a lot of recent activity including the new public buildings, the new public dock, and the newly paved parking lot. The Plan does recommend some improvements for Grahams Grove though including addressing drainage issues in the centre of the Park, shoreline naturalization, paving the pathway loop, providing electrical access, and potential repairs to the 1000 m judges tower.

Lake Banook Regional Park
Along Prince Albert Road, the Plan’s main focus is to improve the shoreline environment with naturalization projects and to tackle the invasive species, like knotweed and multiflora rose, that have taking over parts of the shoreline. There was a lot of public feedback around conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists in this area and the Plan recommends that HRM consider providing a separate protected option for cyclists along Prince Albert Road. This would be looked at in the next phase of the Active Transportation Priorities Plan. HRM should also look at conflict points between trail users and vehicles coming and going from the parking lot by the Mic Mac Aquatic Club. Seating and public art is also suggested for along the trail space.

Silver’s Hill Park
Silver’s Hill has seen some extensive work over the last couple of years with the rebuilt view stands. Much of what is recommended for Silver’s Hill is more long-term speculative supportive projects rather than immediate action items. The Plan recommends that the Boosenech Plaza (Boosenech meaning “Let us Take a Journey Over Water by Canoe”) that was envisioned for the base of the Hill in front of the lower viewing stands on Prince Albert Road be completed. The Plaza space is currently used only as space for parking and nothing else. The planned bollards, potential for food trucks, interpretative signage, and entrace space was never finished. The Plan recommends completing that.

The Plan also identifies burying the powerlines in front of Silvers Hill as desirable, but expensive. As a result, it’s something that HRM will only consider the next time Prince Albert Road requires major work. I sometimes get notes from folks looking to have trees cut on Silver’s Hill to improve the views farther down the racecourse. HRM doesn’t recommend doing that as the trees provide many benefits, including stabilizing the hill’s steep slopes. The boundaries of the existing vegetation will remain, but HRM will consider formalizing the old path that runs through the woods and down to Prince Albert Road. A shade structure for part of the lower view stands will also be considered and HRM will assess the condition of the wooden steps that come down from Sinclair Street.

Capped Assessment Program
Requests for staff reports don’t often generate a lot of interest, but that wasn’t the case for Councillor Steele’s motion to get a report on the capped assessment program (CAP). There has been lots of online discussion, emails to Council, and chatter on talk radio. This one has definitely attracted attention!

The CAP was created by Provincial legislation and isn’t something that HRM can change, but given that it affects how municipal taxes are collected, it’s not something that municipalities can just shrug off as not our responsibility. While we can’t change the CAP, HRM and Nova Scotia’s other municipalities aren’t passive observers. We do have a role to play in pointing out problems with the system. What the Province does that with information… well that’s beyond our control.

The way the CAP works is it limits increases in assessment on a residential property to the consumer price index (CPI). Residential properties essentially have two assessments, a market assessment and a capped assessment. The lower capped assessment is what people pay taxes on. The CAP doesn’t apply to apartments of more than four units, and it resets to market value whenever a property changes hands. For most of the time that the CAP has been in place, assessment growth has exceeded CPI, meaning the only time CAP assessments are being fully reset to market value is when people sell. The result is significant and ever-growing inequities in the property tax system based on how long people have owned their homes. Properties right next to each other of similar value can have vastly different tax bills.

An example close to home. My wife and I bought our house in 2010 for $265,000. With one major addition to replace an old “summer kitchen” that was literally falling off the back of our house, the assessed value today is $680,000. A neighbour on my street who moved to Dartmouth in 2023 lives in a similar sized home on an almost identical lot and has an almost identical assessment of $674,000. Similar homes, similar lots, on the same street, of almost identical value, but our tax bills are anything but similar! Because I have been on my street for 15 years, the CAP means increases in my assessment (except for the renovation value) have been limited to CPI. The result is I pay taxes on just $413,400, while my neighbours, having moved here recently, pays on $621,800! My neighbours pay about $1,700 more a year in municipal taxes than I do and that doesn’t include the mandatory provincial education rate that HRM collects for the Province. HRM adjusts its tax rate down to reflect rising assessments, but the Province never does and, as a result, the education rate keeps becoming a larger and larger share of property tax bills. When you add the mandatory education rate, the gap between my neighbour and I grows to $2,300! There is no means testing to see if I need a tax reduction relative to my neighbour. We’re both working households, both with kids, with similar properties, on the same street, receiving the same services, but I pay much less. Is this at all fair?

Since the CAP isn’t means tested, it applies to both folks who are on limited income and the wealthiest in our society. It’s eye opening to check out assessments on some of the most valuable residential properties in HRM (viewpoint makes it pretty easy with a free account and just a few clicks). There are mansions on the Northwest Arm that have gaps between the market assessment and the CAP assessment of not $100,000s like my neighbour and I, but $1,000,000s. For example, on Ridgewood Drive there is a property assessed at $5,784,500. The homeowner has been there for roughly as long as I have been in my home (last traded hands in 2013), which means their CAP assessment is $3,697,900. That’s a massive difference of $2,086,600 in assessment value, which totals a tax reduction of approximately $23,000 a year! The lost taxable assessment on that one Northwest Arm property probably comes close to equaling the lost assessment on my entire city block and there are multiple properties along the Arm that are seeing millions (yes millions with an s!) in reduced taxable assessment.

For the small breaks that the CAP provides for many, the top 1% receives massive benefits and since the CAP isn’t restricted to primary residences, summer homes that the ultra wealthy might own elsewhere in the Province are also capped. Is this remotely just or equitable? Is a program that creates such big inequities and has no connection whatsoever to someone’s ability to pay supportable? Does this make any sense? The CAP penalizes newcomers, renters, and anyone who might want to move for whatever reason, and it isn’t means tested, so it rewards both those who need it, and those who very clearly don’t.

So who does the cap actually serve? There are households out there who really do struggle to pay their property taxes and folks in that situation understandably fear that removing the CAP will force them to sell their homes. I understand that. That is a real problem. I also believe, however, that there are better ways to deal with that situation than the blanket assessment cap we have now. For example, HRM already forgives taxes for low-income folks. HRM will pay a portion of your tax bill if your household income is less than $49,000 a year. How much HRM will rebate depends on your household income and the size of the tax bill.

After rebating part of the bill, HRM then allows low-income households to defer payments on outstanding amounts into the future. HRM charges an annual interest rate of prime minus two percentage points and allows deferrals to total up to a substantial 75% of a property’s assessed value. The idea is to enable folks on fixed incomes to stay in their home and settle their tax bill when the property is eventually sold, potentially many years later.

We can certainly debate whether HRM’s current measures are adequate and if they should be further enhanced if the CAP were to be removed or significantly altered (something that I think would be required). To suggest though that the CAP is the only way to deal with the situation of low-income folks facing property tax bills that they can’t afford is just simply not true. There are other policy options we could consider if there is the political will to look at the problem.

So if the CAP is so bad and there are other alternatives to deal with the issue of fixed-income seniors being taxed out of their homes, why does it stick around? The politics around the CAP are next to impossible. The arguments against it, as how many words it has taken me to get to this part shows, are complex, while the arguments to keep it are simple and very visceral. The other piece of the puzzle is that many folks who are losing out through the CAP’s flaws don’t even know it.

When HRM last looked at this in detail in 2017, the analysis found that about half of homeowners benefit through lower bills (56%) while the other half don’t (44%). Most renters of course don’t benefit at all. Of the homeowners, more than half of those who don’t benefit (26% of overall homeowners) don’t realize that they’re on the losing side of the CAP. Why? Because no one sees the higher tax rate that the CAP produces. If the CAP were removed, municipal tax rates would drop!

So what happens is folks who think they’re benefiting open up their notice of assessment each year and think they’re paying less because their property’s taxable assessment has been reduced. What they can’t see is that the cost of running city services isn’t based on the CAP. With so much of the residential tax base capped, HRM and Nova Scotia’s other municipalities all have higher tax rates than would otherwise be the case to pay for the fixed cost of services. So unless the savings on your bill are significant, the higher overall tax rate is possibly wiping out your CAP savings or greatly diminishing them.

To go back to the example of my neighbours, they now have two years of capped assessment on their property, so they might be thinking “well it’s not fair that we pay way more than Austin, but at least we’re now benefiting a little bit by by our assessment reduction of $52,800.” I’m afraid the answer there is still no. They’re still losing as that small reduction in assessment doesn’t outweigh the higher tax rate. When HRM computed this in 2017, a property’s CAP savings had to exceed 10% to make up for HRM’s higher tax rate. So my neighbours 7.8% CAP saving wouldn’t be enough to offset the higher tax rate that the CAP produces. They’re still behind. It’s just now not so obvious. Given all the changes in the market since 2017 in terms of assessments and taxes, my hunch is the percentage needed to make up for the higher tax rate would be even greater today! I’m hoping that, as part of the staff report, HRM will update these calculations to 2025 numbers.

I have suggested in the past that HRM should actually do the math for folks on their tax bill each year, but I was never able to get any traction on the idea with staff who fear complicating the billing. Maybe as part of this fresh examination of the CAP that can be revisited! It’s hard to get change off the ground when a lot of folks who are losing out through the CAP don’t even realize it and are unknowingly against their own self-interest. Probably the best opportunity to educate folks on whether they’re actually behind because of the CAP’s impact on the tax rate is when they open their bills.

Since Councillor Steele’s motion passed, HRM will look at the CAP, but unless something significant changes, I have no expectation that the Province will actually do anything. The Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities did a lot of work to try and drive CAP reform in the late 2010s (hence the 2017 HRM report), but despite all the effort, reform died at the Provincial level. The Province’s municipalities were almost completely united in asking for change, but the Liberal government of the day wanted consensus amongst the three provincial political parties. That ultimately fell apart and the all-party committee meetings in 2020 went nowhere (see CBC here and here). No one at the Provincial level is willing to risk being labelled as in favour of throwing low-income seniors out of their homes to fix a financial problem that exists at the municipal level. Tim Houston has commented on the CAP since becoming Premier a few times and has indicated that it’s not something that his government is interested in changing.

So although I think it’s worthwhile for HRM to document the problems and to keep pushing on this issue to try and change the underlying politics, I also, realistically, know there is little to no chance that anything will happen anytime soon. If you’re worried that the CAP might go away, you can probably relax. If you’re angry about the CAP’s inequities, I’m sorry to say we’re probably stuck with it for now. The CAP is unfair and broken and there are potential alternatives that we could explore to help folks who truly can’t pay their bills, but there is just no political courage at the Provincial level to deal with the problem.

Other

• Approved a less than market value lease for the Spencer House Senior’s Centre
• Deferred discussion on the staff report response to my motion regarding building code requirements around small single access point buildings until the New Year
• Set street names for several new streets and private lanes throughout HRM, including Brightwater Lane and Cutwater Close in King’s Wharf
• Approved the public engagement approach for the Suburban Plan
• Gave first reading to charging residential parking permits by weight
• Provided $150,000 in funding to Rooted (formerley Dartmouth Non-Profit Housing) to help purchase a six unit building
• Scheduled a public hearing to register 1530 Oxford Street as a heritage building
• Directed staff to continue the heritage registration process for a number of Dalhousie University properties while also discontinuing the process for a number of the University’s other properties (basically all the Dal properties were sorted into high-scoring potential heritage properties and properties that don’t have much heritage value and the high-scoring ones will proceed)
• Approved substantial alterations to multiple heritage properties on Carleton Street to support their restoration and redevelopment (this is the project at Carleton/College/Robie where the mover that was hired to relocate one of the properties dropped it, destroying the building, and making the approved plan impossible to complete. First step in considering a new plan)
• Forgave approximately $20,000 in owed taxes for two properties undergoing Land Titles Clarification in North Preston
• Granted $50,000 to the Orenda Canoe Club for capital improvements
• Increased the budget for the Fire Department’s Structural Training Facility by $1,500,000 due to higher than budgeted bids
• Declined to partner with the Province to enhance facilities at the planned new school in Timberlea, but did direct staff to assess whether a sidewalk would be required on Timberlea Village Parkway as a result of the new school and to discuss with the Province
• Reviewed Halifax Water’s annual Accountability Review and the Strategic Plan Implementation Framework
• Opted not to create a municipal architect position and to instead continue to use staff that HRM has who have architectural backgrounds who work in related fields and to engage external consultants when required
• Amended the false alarm bylaw to reduce residential false alarm fees to $50 and commercial fees to $300 and scrapped the old approach of escalating fines with subsequent calls due to inequities created by multi-tenant buildings and concerns that people won’t actually report alarms
• Council requested staff reports on (1) public feedback to the Sandy Lake Special Planning Area, (2) a potential new heritage district between Robie and Windsor Street near the Common, and (3) on creating some licensed vending spots for food trucks on Sackville Drive