This week started off what is always one of the most important debates on the City Hall calendar: the budget adjustment list. During HRM’s budget process, each department presents their plan for the year to Council. As we review all the information from the various departments, Councillors can move potential changes that we want to consider to the budget adjustment list (mostly opportunities to do more, but also potential cuts) for further consideration. Once Council has finished reviewing all the departments, we review everything on the adjustment list to decide what’s in and what’s out, resulting in the complete municipal budget. I wrote last week about what we’re considering this year here.
Council is still in the midst of deliberations (we resume Monday afternoon), but here’s where things have landed so far:
Community Crisis Diversion Team
Council voted to fund a crisis diversion team. A crisis diversion team would respond to non-violent calls from people in crisis. It’s not a new idea. Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, and many municipalities in BC have already implemented crisis teams and the results are impressive. Between March and September 2022, Toronto’s crisis team received 2,489 unique calls, including 1,530 from 911 that would have mostly otherwise gone to police. The mobile team was able to successfully resolve 1,198 calls and in only 4% of cases did the team have to request other emergency services. Toronto’s crisis team has taken a large volume of work off of the police department’s plate and that work is now being done by civilians with specific mental health training. We need to do the same here.
I’m glad that Council voted 15-1 (Cuttell away, Mayor Fillmore voting no) to provide $463,000 to pilot a crisis team here. I believe we’re in a moment like the 1970s when the idea of paramedics took off. Before paramedics, people were often transported to hospital in the back of police cars. Paramedics are such a clearly better approach that we have now largely forgotten a time when they didn’t exist. I believe that crisis teams will prove to be such a clearly better way to handle most mental health calls that they will eventually be looked at in a similar way. This is a very important pilot project and I believe the start of something big. I hope the Mayor will come around on this one as Council will need to allocate more money in future if we want to grow the program from a limited pilot to a full service.
Homeless Supports
There was good news as well for homelessness supports. Up for consideration was funding an After Hours Individualized Mobile Engagement Team (AIM Team) and the long dreamed for day centre.
The AIM Team started work in January and provides support at encampments and to the homeless population outside of the 8-4 Monday to Friday window. The AIM Team connects people to services, provide folks with emergency supplies, help resolve conflicts at encampments, and are available to respond to emergency calls. This is important and meaningful work that is improving the lives of people who are stuck outside while also reducing impacts on surrounding communities. The cost for a full year of the AIM team is approximately $1,500,000.
The proposed day centre is a project that HRM and the Province have agreed to jointly fund. The goal is to provide a space that’s open during the day when shelters are closed where services such as food, showers, laundry, medical, storage, and links to other support providers. To get this project over the finish line needed an additional $150,000 in funding in this year’s budget.
Council ended up not having to vote on either of these items because staff identified money in reserve that could be allocated for these projects (I suspect it was also staff realizing this work was too important to chance a no vote at Council). Although I would prefer that both the AIM team and day centre be funded from the general tax rate since there will be ongoing expenses for both, I think it’s okay to fund these from reserve right now given that the day centre expenses are mostly upfront costs and the AIM team is a new program that is still basically in the pilot phase. In 2026 Council will have to decide whether to fund the AIM team permanently, but we’ll have a year’s worth of results to consider at that point to help inform that decision. There could also be significant federal and provincial help given the recent federal announcement of $14,000,000 in funding for Nova Scotia to help communities manage encampments.
RCMP Officers
Council voted to hire 14 more RCMP officers. The new officers would be community officers in Fall River (6), Beechville (6), Musquodoboit Harbour (1) and Sheet Harbour (1). This is just the first phase of the RCMP’s planned community policing expansion. They intend to request a further nine officers next year.
For the last several years, I have held the position that adding lots more police officers isn’t appropriate when we’re in the midst of trying to implement reforms to detask police from jobs that would be better performed by others (like crisis teams and homeless supports that Council is funding this year). I have only voted for additional police officers once since 2020 and that was when HRP was in a real staffing crisis coming out of COVID. I think this is especially important in relation to the RCMP for a few reasons.
I’m not convinced that the current HRP and RCMP boundaries, which have barely changed since amalgamation, make sense. If HRM is going to continue having two police forces, it would make sense for the RCMP to be our rural force while HRP would be our urban/suburban force. It’s worth considering whether the RCMP should still be policing highly developed suburban areas like Sackville and Cole Harbour. I also don’t love the fact that HRM’s direct oversight of the RCMP is limited as they’re much more controlled from Ottawa. The stark difference in how long it took HRP versus the RCMP to respond appropriately with an apology for street checks illustrates the difference well. Those are issues that will take years to unravel and study and that are also wrapped up in big picture thinking that is currently going on at the Provincial and Federal levels.
In the here and now, I’m not comfortable adding lots of new officers to HRP or the RCMP if it’s a nice to have not a need. I didn’t find the RCMP presentation convincing in terms of 14 more officers being a need, especially when actual call volumes are pretty much unchanged and have actually decreased from a 2021-2022 peak, which includes the communities where the RCMP wants to expand community policing.
So I voted against adding RCMP officers along with Councillors White, Hinch, and Cleary. The rest voted in favour (minus Councillor Cuttell who was away). HRM will be spending $1,402,000 more on the RCMP with another approximately $1,000,000 ask coming next year.
Police Armoured Vehicle
Still with policing, Council voted 15-2 on Friday to fund an armoured vehicle for HRP. Councillors Hinch and Cleary voted against, myself and everyone else voted in favour. You’re probably wondering why I voted against extra RCMP officers, pushed hard for homeless supports, voted for a crisis team, but then voted for an armoured vehicle. I’ll explain.
In 2019 and 2020 I voted against purchasing an armoured vehicle. I based my vote then largely on the fact that the RCMP have an armoured vehicle that HRP has access to. I didn’t see why, when we supposedly have an integrated police force, that we needed two armoured vehicles.
Unfortunately, the reality that police have documented since 2020 is that the RCMP vehicle isn’t nearly as available to HRP as I thought. It is used throughout the Province and when you factor that in alongside RCMP maintenance and training, it has been unavailable to HRP 33% of the time. That wasn’t what I expected.
I wish it were true that police didn’t need a vehicle like this. In justifying the decision, police have pointed to the recent Africville shooting as an example of the need, and frankly, I think that’s stretching things. The actual close to home example that comes to mind is the 2018 Fredericton shootings where two civilians and then two responding officers were murdered in an apartment building courtyard by a shooter overlooking the space. An armoured vehicle could make a difference in a barricaded/rescue situation like that, and we would be naive to imagine that something like that couldn’t happen here. It already has happened to our New Brunswick neighbours.
Beyond the worst-case mass shooting situation that everyone thinks of, HRP actually uses the RCMP armoured vehicle more frequently than I expected, mainly for high-risk warrants and searches. Since 2022, HRP has drawn on the RCMP vehicle 23 times.
Given that my original belief that the RCMP vehicle should be enough has been very much proven false and that HRP uses the vehicle much more than I assumed, I was prepared to vote for the armoured vehicle.
The additional curveball that came Council’s way is that the police union has made an occupational health and safety complaint to the Labour Board alleging that HRM hasn’t provided the Emergency Response Team the necessary equipment for them to safely do their job. Given that every city of HRM’s size across the country has an armoured vehicle and that HRP now has a full-time emergency response team (we didn’t in 2019), and that the RCMP vehicle isn’t always available, it is pretty clear to me that HRM was going to lose the Labour Board complaint. The Labour Board could order HRM to buy a vehicle, fine HRM, or even prosecute the municipality, or some combination of all three. If you think intervention from the Labour Board is a remote possibility, consider that in the aftermath of the 2014 Moncton shootings, the RCMP were charged and found guilty of not properly training and equipping their officers. The fines levied on the RCMP totalled $650,000. If something happened to a member of HRM’s emergency response team, we could find ourselves in the same situation.
So in my opinion, no matter what Council voted to do on Friday, one way or another, HRM was going to end up with an armoured vehicle. It was just a question of whether it was going to be willingly or by Labour Board order at potentially even greater cost. In reality, there actually wasn’t much of a choice here.
There are many folks in Dartmouth Centre who want police reform and don’t want HRM to buy an armoured vehicle. I’m sympathetic to those views, hence my enthusiastic support for detasking initiatives such as homeless supports, neighbour mediation, crisis teams etc and my opposition to adding more officers unless the need is truly pressing. I thought for a second or two about voting against the armoured vehicle knowing that most of my colleagues were going to vote for it, but that’s not how I roll. If I’m for something, I vote for it, if I’m against it, I vote against it. I don’t play those kind of political games. I was satisfied that HRM needs a vehicle and that fighting this would also be futile and just cost us more in the end.
I know not everyone is happy with that outcome, but I think it’s the right choice given all the surrounding context and circumstances. Better to put more effort into questioning why we need even more RCMP officers next years to handle flat/declining call volumes.
Central Library Fund (spending our savings)
Council had two big picture debates around fiscal sustainability. Being fiscally prudent is always a bit of a hard sell because the advantages are netted back overtime. There is no immediate political reward for being fiscally prudent the way there is for responding to resident concerns with better services or saving people money through lower taxes. The long-term benefits of being sustainable is hard to argue in the short-term business that politics often is!
How does this relate to the Central Library? When the Central Library was built in 2008, HRM established a capital reserve for future projects at the Library. The original thought was that HRM would have a reserve fund for every major facility, but that has never really panned out. The Central Library reserve built up over time to $10,000,000 and Council was left with a choice of what to do with it. Spend the money or dedicate it to other capital projects?
My take, and that of HRM’s finance staff, is that using one-time money to fund ongoing operations is a terrible idea. Funding operations with savings just kicks the moment of reckoning down the road. Operating costs need to be paid for with stabile reoccurring revenues, not one-time windfalls. So what I pitched to colleagues was that we should take the Central Library reserve and reallocate it to general capital so that it can be used to offset debt on big one-time projects. If we used the Central Library reserve to fund the upcoming North End Library Branch project, for example, it would save HRM between $4,000,000-$5,000,000 over twenty years by reducing our debt costs. That $4,000,000-$5,000,000 is real money that directly reduces future tax pressures.
The counter argument that the mayor pushed with this motion was that we’re living in extraordinary times and that we should spend our savings to offset taxes now to provide people with some tax relief. The mayor’s response to what do we do in 2026 when expenses remain, but our savings are gone is that he envisions a service review producing substantial savings to make up the shortfall. I disagree with this approach.
The outcome of a review of HRM’s operations is completely unknown right now. It might net substantial savings, or it might not. Other politicians that have gone down this route, like Rob Ford in Toronto, didn’t find some hidden pot of gravy, they just found tough choices about what to slash. I’m totally fine with reviewing HRM’s services to try and find savings, but to budget in anticipation of an outcome that isn’t yet know is fundamentally a risky move. As staff explained, all else being equal, spending the Central Library reserve means that Council will be starting the 2026 budget with a 1.4% increase before we consider any other pressures like permanent funding for the AIM team, more RCMP officers, all the union contract increases, etc. This is very much kicking the can down the road in my opinion and politically expedient, but fiscally irresponsible.
It turned out to be a very close vote, but the spenders won. The Mayor got his wish and Council voted 9-8 to spend our savings on funding operations. In the old Council it was often just 3-4 of us fighting not to spend one-time surpluses on operations so a better result than before when these decisions came before us, but so heartbreakingly close. Myself, Cleary, Cuttell, Hartling, Hinch, Mancini, Morse, and White voted no, but we were one vote short. Council not doing itself any favours for 2026! I don’t expect a service review will suddenly find lots of hidden money. This is almost certainly a deferred tax increase to come.
Deed Transfer Tax (prudence prevails)
The push for a fiscally sustainable approach turned out differently when we considered whether to increase the deed transfer tax estimates.
Deed transfer tax revenues are extremely volatile and are hard to forecast since it depends on market activity. Residential sales are a bit easier to estimate, but a few big commercial sales, like when the Halifax Shopping Centre changed hands, can really mess with projections and produce one-time windfalls. Ideally, HRM should estimate deed transfer revenues conservatively so that we have a cushion and don’t find ourselves in deficit. If we do better than expected, the resulting surplus can then be used to top up reserves to offset the need to borrow. This was unofficially the system I landed in when I was first elected in 2016. Between 2016-2021 HRM pretty consistently ran surpluses.
The danger of being overly optimistic on deed transfer tax was starkly demonstrated though in 2022 when the goose stopped laying golden eggs. In 2022, staff buckled under the pressure from Council to “right-size” deed transfer tax estimates so that we would stop running big surpluses. Council instead was going to spend that money. We did that, unfortunately, just in time for rising interest rates to put the brakes on the real estate market. Deed transfer tax revenue dropped precipitously from a high of $81,000,000 to $75,000,000 in 2022 and continued to drop in 2023 and 2024 settling on $65,000,000. When HRM runs a deficit the municipality faces a double-whammy in the following budget as the deficit has to be made up, and then HRM has to budget realistically based on actual fiscal reality. The result since 2022 has been a big hole in HRM’s budget. It’s not a coincidence that the tax bill increases in recent years have been much more significant!
The draft 2025 budget already forecasts a rise in deed transfer tax revenues from $65,000,000 to $70,000,000. Council considered making that projection $73,000,000 instead. Given the uncertainty we currently face around tariffs, does this feel like the year to be putting forward rosy projections? No. Luckily a majority of Council agreed. Councillor Kent’s proposal to increase deed transfer tax estimates by $3,000,000 was pruned down to a $1,500,000 at the suggestion of the Mayor, but Council still turned the whole idea down 12-5 (Kent, Purdy, Mancini, Hendsbee, Fillmore voted yes). So a loss for fiscal sustainability on the library fund, but a win on deed transfer estimates.
Other:
This is getting rather long so I think I will cut things off here for now. Council did include about $8,000,000 in cuts and adjustments that weren’t controversial and that won’t have service impacts. We also voted to fund keeping 10 buses on the road that would have otherwise been retired to help reduce overloads on routes that are facing scheduling and crowding issues. Council turned down cutting the Downtown Dartmouth concert series by $100,000 (yay!), but slashed half the tree planting budget (boo!). Our debate resumes on Monday afternoon.
Thanks for your detailed and informative reports as usual. With respect to the crises diversion teams experience in other cities, I would have liked to see data on outcomes (less calls overall, less crime) rather than just outputs (less calls to the police). Speaking of crime, my niece, while house sitting for us on Shore road, witnessed 2 drug deals in progress at Geary Park, where tents are multiplying with warming temperatures. One of these deals involved loud fighting. Who is dealing with that? Normally I would say the police but I am not sure of the role of the police relative to the homeless anymore. This is not a good scene. My niece has to change her routes to avoid the area. How is public safety weighed in the management of the encampments?
The request for an RCMP office in North Preston came from the community for reasons that are obvious to many residents in HRM. In October 2021 the OIC of Halifax RCMP told the BOPC that a 24/7/365 patrol in North Preston had been started following several homicides in the community of 800 residents.
The ARV purchase is long overdue and the delay, due to deliberately misleading articles in an online publication and designed to rile up a certain segment of the population, led a few councillors to make the wrong decision. You don’t need house/life insurance until you need insurance. I don’t know the rate of PTSD in police offices, I do know that EHS has significant rate in employees who have just 5 years on the job.
There is no ‘hidden money’ but there are some expenses that are nice to have but the world changed late last year and all governments need to fund essentials and let go of the ‘nice to have’. We all face a difficult few years as power shifts across the globe bringing new challenges to all levels of government in Canada. The real estate market is very weak and I doubt that many of the condo/apartment buildings will be anywhere near to generating a significant return on investment.
In the budget items dated March 12, 2025 under Deeper Reductions and Service Changes there was little opertunity for the public to be consulted on Weekly Green bin ,parking sidewalk clearing and Change Bus Stop Snowclearing wher suppose have been “brought forward as information because they are items that have been either utilized or discussed in the past,” a for me it just out of the blue councilors and the mayor just randomly made the motion without consudering the opinions of the public . To me its councillor going down these rabbit hole to change something they know its unpopular