HRM’s debt crisis arrives
City buys 10 new busses without debt
by Matt Stickland
Halifax’s city council all got elected on promises to improve transit, and year over year transit keeps losing time to congestion and busses to age. As the city grows, transit demand increases and more busses are needed to meet the needs of the growing population.
On a note of optimism, councillors decided during this year’s budget debates to invest in some new busses for Halifax Transit.
These new busses will cost about $10 million. Just before council was going to start debating this spending, chief financial officer Jerry Blackwood interrupted proceedings to tell council these busses could not be bought with debt. The city has too much debt already.
“We have been saying debt is coming for four years,” Blackwood told the Budget Committee. “The day has come, the debt is here.”
Council’s credit cards are maxxed out and can’t be charged for 10 new busses.
The path to Halifax’s debt crisis is paved with fiscal unsustainability, the same unsustainability that forced Halifax into amalgamation. Halifax’s suburban and rural communities cost more money for the city to service than they make in taxes. This leads to annual operational and capital shortfalls in the city’s suburban and rural communities.
But the city locked into the debt crisis sometime around the start of the mayorship of Mike Savage in 2012.
During Savage’s 12 years as Mayor and in the last two years under the second former-Liberal-member-of-parliament-turned-mayor Andy Fillmore, council has been laser-focused on lowering taxes in the name of affordability.
