Council Update: Parking U-Turn, Non-profit Tax Relief, Playing Field Strategy

Agenda Regional Council April 25
Agenda Budget Committee April 25
Agenda Committee of the Whole April 25 (policing study)
Agenda Regional Council April 4
Agenda Committee of the Whole April 4 (playing field strategy)

Saturday Paid Parking
Council approved the 2023/2024 budget, but not without some last minute drama around parking. HRM has changed course on paid parking on Saturday. Parking on the weekend will continue to be free.

Saturday paid parking was something that came out of Council’s efforts to find ways to reduce this year’s increase in property tax bills. HRM hasn’t charged for parking on Saturdays before, but we’re almost alone in that. Most big Canadian cities charge for parking on Saturdays including: Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec City. The only comparable Canadian cities that don’t have paid parking on Saturday are Winnipeg, Regina, and London. Go Downtown in almost any big city in Canada on Saturday and parking isn’t free. Charging for parking ensures turnover, and better reflects the cost of providing the road space. I’m generally okay with it.

Paid parking on Saturday generated predictable opposition from the Downtown business community who came out to Council to oppose the measure. There was enough push back that a motion to rescind Council’s decision to include paid parking in the budget was put forward by Councillor Lovelace.

The original motion to include Saturday parking passed 9-8, but the rules say that for Council to rescind a decision requires 2/3rds. Twelve votes were needed to remove Saturday parking from the budget. During debate on the motion, Councillors Morse, Deagle-Gammon, and Blackburn, indicated they had changed their mind, creating a likely 11-6 result. So a solid majority in favour of not proceeding with Saturday parking, but one vote short of 2/3rds.

The problem with that situation is that putting Saturday parking into the budget doesn’t actually make it law. To make Saturday parking real would also require a bylaw amendment. Changing the bylaw would be a new item for Council to consider and, therefore, would require a simple majority, not 2/3rds. Based on how the vote was shaping up, there is no way that a majority were going to vote to approve the actual bylaw change.

So, we were heading for a situation where the vote to take Saturday parking out of the budget was going to fail, but then the needed bylaw amendments to actually make it happen were also going to fail. Saturday parking was a zombie: dead on its feet, but still kicking. So, I switched my vote to make sure there was 2/3rds in favour of rescinding.

My vote was entirely a pragmatic decision. There is no point having staff waste time and effort on preparing amendments for a bylaw that the majority was going to vote down, no benefit to the community in needless uncertainty, and no point in putting a financial item into the budget that clearly wasn’t going to actually happen. Had the vote not needed 2/3rds, I would have voted the other way. My vote was purely a practical call.

As it turned out, I could have voted with my heart rather than pragmatically because Councillor Kent, although she didn’t speak during the debate, also switched sides creating a 13-4 result. Two-thirds with one vote to spare. A moment where I pulled off that rare political feat of pleasing no one, except maybe a few HRM staff who now aren’t going to be troubled with preparing doomed bylaw amendments because of procedural quirks. Based on the tone around the room, I suspect we will look at this again in some future year.

Parking Fines
Still with parking, repeat offenders will face higher parking fines in the near future. Council has adopted changes to the parking bylaw that escalates fines. For the first five parking tickets, the fine is the same as it is now, $45 ($40 if paid in seven days), but going forward tickets 6-12 will cost $65 each, and any tickets after the twelfth will cost $85. Parking fines will become progressively more expensive for repeat offenders.

HRM will also start escalating tickets for other violations, so-called Category A, B and C fines. Categories A, B and C come from the Motor Vehicle Act and its regulations and include:

Category	Offence
A	Parking in a no parking or no stopping zone Parking at a bus stop of taxi stand Parking in a loading zone Parking within 5 metres of a crosswalk Parking within 5 metres of a fire hydrant Parking in an intersection Parking on the sidewalk Parking in a driveway
B	Parking that obstructs traffic Parking when the vehicle can’t be seen from 60 metres away Parking that interferes with snow removal Parking within 150 metres of fire trucks responding to an emergency Parking in violation of temporary regulations
C	Parking on the left-hand side of a divided highway Parking in a fire lane Parking in an accessible spot without a permit

Fines for ABC violations are set by the Province. The Province’s existing regulations have always allowed for escalating fines, but in practice that never happened because there wasn’t really any ability to connect the parking record for a given license pate with the officer writing the ticket on the street. That has changed with HRM’s new electronic parking equipment. Our parking officers now have the ability to review the record attached to a license plate on the spot meaning that they can now apply escalating penalties for ABC violations. Here’s how the Province allows fines to escalate by category

Category	First Offence	Second Offence	Third Offence
A	$25	$50	$100
B	$50	$100	$200
C	$100	$200	$400

HRM had been hoping the Province would be willing to increase fine amounts, but the Province hasn’t shown much interest in doing so. Being able to escalate fines for repeat offenders is a pretty good alternative outcome. Hopefully escalating fines will help encourage repeat offenders, who sometimes regard the occasional ticket as just the cost of their parking, to change their ways.

Non-Profit Tax Relief
HRM is making some significant changes to how the municipality’s non-profit tax relief program operates. The program allows non-profits who own property, and a few who lease, to have their property tax bills reduced or eliminated. The program provides benefits to 245 organizations in HRM and applies to 810 properties. It’s one of HRM’s more significant grant programs.

While the non-profit tax relief program has provided many non-profits with a lot of support it has suffered from a lack of consistency and transparency. Similar types of organizations were often offered significantly different levels of support and it was often unclear what support they would receive and why. Part of the existing program’s lack of clarity is the conversion from commercial to residential rates. That calculation had to done manually in excel for each property, which also increased the potential for human error. It was time for a rethink of the whole thing.

What HRM is replacing the old program with is one that groups like non-profits together. The six new schedules are:

Schedule	Type of Organization	Tax Exemption
A	Housing and services to persons with special needs	100%
B	Family, child, and youth services	85%
C	Cultural, recreational, environmental, and community transit	75%
D	Affordable housing	50%
E	Community benefit	25%
F	Vacant property under development	75%
G	Federal rapid housing projects	100%
H	Volunteer search and rescue	100%

A standard non-profit tax rate will be applied to each property calculated based on the urban residential rate, and truncated at one decimal point (an end to complicated an opaque conversion calculations). No more complicated conversion metrics.

Unfortunately, in trying to adjust a tax program that is full of inconsistency, there are always some that end up paying less and some that pay more. Moving to the new program will be particularly messy in the recreation category where the lack of consistency was the most pronounced. For example, paddling clubs were 100% exempt from taxes while other recreational organizations like St. George’s and the Dartmouth Curling Club paid thousands of dollars. Most non-profits will do better under the new program, with costs decreasing for 84% of properties. The other 16% will pay more, generally in the range of a few hundred dollars. The new program will launch this year.

Playing Field Strategy
Council has approved a playing field strategy for HRM. A number of Councillors had specific field complaints, but the strategy is meant to be more of a big picture overview, not a tactical document. Some of the big conclusions in the strategy is that HRM has enough fields in its existing inventory for all sports except cricket. As our community has grown and become more diverse, the demand for cricket has grown, but the only cricket ground in HRM is a temporary one on the Halifax Common. A permanent cricket field is needed.

Although there are enough existing fields for other sports, the quality of them and facilities don’t always line up. For ball fields, there are too many overlapping outfields, they’re not all accessible, and HRM lacks for a location where multiple fields exist alongside each other where tournaments could be easily held. Lighting is also a missed opportunity to expand capacity at both ball and grass fields. The strategy identified that shared fields with schools don’t work very well from a sports point-of-view as school fields are difficult to maintain as they have no downtime and there can be conflicts with school usage. HRM also needs to do a better job of managing turf.

The strategy provides a number of recommendations for HRM to implement over the next 15 years. One of the near-term ones that is relevant to District 5 is rationalizing the ball diamonds at Maybank in Crichton Park (one of those overlapping outfield situations). Another near-term recommendation, although more general, commits HRM to assessing undersized fields for either upgrades or repurposing for other uses. The field at Dartmouth High might fit into this category as I know from past discussions that it’s not big enough to be a proper field for the school. HRM will also review off-leash dog usage at existing fields, plan to reduce the number of playing fields on the Halifax Common, concentrate future investment at regional hub facilities, and reform the booking process to be more transparent and equitable.

Other

• Began debate on the policing transformation study (more on this when we conclude that debate at our next Council meeting)
• Registered 6112 Coburg Road as a heritage property
• Approved fly-past requests for Canada Day (Snowbirds), COVE Demo Day, and the Highway of Heroes Tribute
• Awarded naming rights for the Bedford Four-Pad
• Declared 9 Spring Street in Bedford as a surplus municipal property and approved holding a public hearing to consider a less than market value sale to the Nova Scotia Salmon Association
• Approved a public hearing to consider additional changes to a number of suburban plans around shared housing
• First reading for bylaw changes to enable increasing fees for development
• Renewed the agreement with the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund to continue hosting a Downie Wenjack Legacy Room at City Hall
• Directed staff to prioritize short-term improvements to the signaling system at the intersection of Hammonds Plains Road and Lucasville Road while longer-term plans are being developed
• Initiated a staff report on the new road trails designation that the Province has created to allow municipalities to create “corridors” for ATVs (I voted against this one)
• Requested a staff report on amendments to HRM’s campaign finance bylaw and on signage policy
• Passed a resolution on “urgent action needed to address the crisis in homelessness” to support the Mayor’s efforts as part of the Big City Mayor’s group and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to pressure the federal government to do more to address homelessness
• Amended the Halifax Municipal Planning Strategy to allow for redevelopment on Westerwald Street in Halifax
• Expanded HRM’s successful approach to controlling signage along the highway to Peggy’s Cove to the Eastern Shore around Musquodoboit Harbour
• Finalized the rental registry and amendments to the Minimum Standards Bylaw
• Declined to take on ownership of street lights on private roads
• Amended the delegation of authorities bylaws to require Council approval for any non-disclosure agreements that staff might want to enter into if the proposed NDA’s would preclude sharing information with Council
• Permanently expanded the crosswalk program to allow for the Pan-African flag to be used as a decoration between the white lines in HRM’s historic black communities
• Endorsed the 2023-2026 African Nova Scotian Road to Economic Prosperity Plan
• Reverted interest charges on overdue taxes to 15% (had been reduced to 10% during COVID)
• Entered into a bonus zoning agreement for 5185 South Street (Elmwood Hotel) that will see the Elmwood relocated on site and preserved as part of a larger redevelopment of the property
• Scheduled heritage hearings for 6032-6034 Charles Street in Halifax, and 2096 Creighton Street
• Updated HRM’s Administrative Order for public participation in planning matters and scheduled a public hearing to update the relevant planning bylaws