The city’s budget pre-season is done. Wednesday’s special meeting of Halifax regional council brought the preparations for next year’s budget to an end, with council giving chief financial officer Jerry Blackwood and chief administrative officer Jaques Dubé their marching orders. The senior staffers will come back in a few weeks with information, suggestions and requests from the city’s various departments, then the work of finalizing Halifax’s 2022-23 spending plan can begin. And while it’s always hard to predict the future, this budget season is shaping up to be very interesting.
The tension is that the city has gotten into a tough financial situation, but HRM’s elected officials don’t want voters to be upset by the budget because there is an election in two years, and some of councillors are considering re-election. Broadly speaking, the politicians are trying to avoid the unpopular move of raising taxes, while maintaining—not cutting—the service levels we expect and rely on, from transit to garbage pickup to paying for substitute teachers for the Halifax Regional Centre for Education. (Seriously. Even though education is very clearly defined as a provincial responsibility, the city has been kicking money to the province for the HRCE since 1995.) Plus, Halifax just got more unplanned expenses thanks to the province downloading millions of dollars of asphalt liabilities to the city.
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