Year In Review: Mayor Mike Savage On Managing Growth In Halifax
To cap off 2021, Huddle sat down with some of the most important figures in Atlantic Canada’s business community – folks representing everyone from tourism operators to energy producers to housing advocates.
We asked each to reflect on the challenges, successes, and surprises that most impacted their industries, and the lives of Atlantic Canadians, this year.
In the latest of several conversations we will bring you over the next week, Huddle reporter Derek Montague spoke with Mike Savage, the Mayor of Halifax.
His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Looking back at 2021, what were the most challenging issues you and the council faced?
A: Dealing with Covid and its impacts is a big deal for all governments. Certainly, in Halifax, we see enormous (population) growth in the city. Housing and homelessness are certainly a challenge that was front and center throughout 2021 and will require attention in 2022 as well.
Q: What do you think the council was able to achieve that didn’t get as much attention, given the chaos of 2021?
A: The success of Halifax is that people want to live here; that’s a good thing, we’ve wanted this for years. So, the growth of Halifax has been amazing. The increase in the number of young people who are wanting to move to Halifax is amazing. I’ve talked to companies this year that have moved to Halifax, some of which wouldn’t have imagined doing so a couple of years ago.
Our tech sector has just taken off – it’s booming at a rate that would have been unimaginable. And that brings energy and vitality to the city. The growth of the economy has been amazing. The beauty of these companies involved in innovation and technology and IT is their customers tend to be in other places. So, they hire people here to do the work, but their work is exported, which is real wealth for our community, which is a great thing.
We’ve had an amazing number of building permits issued this year, which are needed because of the housing challenges.
The third thing I would say is moving on the environment – our Halifax Climate Action Plan. It’s a great plan; it’s been recognized by people, literally, internationally. Now, of course, we have to fund it and do some of the work that has to be done.
Q: what are some of the greatest challenges council will face in 2022?
A: We’ve begun our budget process. Like every Mayor in the country that I talk to on a regular basis (mentions), it’s a challenging budget. The impacts of Covid are severe. If you look at, for example, loss of transit revenue – we have to make that up.
Also, investing in things like housing and homelessness, which, strictly speaking, is not in our mandate, but have to be. So, we’re hiring people to do work in areas of both housing and homelessness that cities never had to do before.
(We want) attainable housing, so housing across the board. And that means that people of all incomes and ability to pay, but with a particular eye towards driving affordability through the system and to also continue to take care of those who simply have no home to live in. We’re just about ready to launch our modular units, which we’re paying for.
The big question is: how do we fund our Climate Action Plan? We’ve kept our taxes down very significantly versus large cities the last number of years. And this will be a challenging year unless we decide we’re not going to fund those things that will improve our ability to withstand climate change. If we don’t do that, we’ll be paying for it later.
Q: Given the budgetary challenges being faced by municipal governments everywhere, how do you envision councils, such as Halifax’s, are going to make ends meet?
A: We absolutely need the help of our partners – the federal and provincial government. Municipalities, we control over half of all the infrastructure; we have to pay for it, we have to manage it…but we collect less than 10 percent of the taxes.
We have some reserve money put away. I think funding climate change would be one of the things we could consider with that. We have debt room, but we don’t want to use it unless we have to. The average citizen of HRM is paying way less in municipal debt than in provincial or federal debt. We recognize we don’t want to burden future generations, but we also have to realize that some of the investments we make will also benefit future generations.
The bottom line for Halifax is well over 80 percent of our revenue comes from property tax, in any given year. That’s even more difficult this year because of the reduction in transit revenue. If we’re losing five, ten, or twelve million dollars in transit revenue, that’s got to be made up somewhere else.
On top of all that is we have to recognize that a lot of people are really struggling with their own financial circumstances, and we don’t want to add to their (burden) by hiking taxes beyond people’s ability to pay.
Other feature interviews in this series:
- Monette Pasher On How Covid Forever Changed Atlantic Canada’s Airline Industry
- Kathryn Lockhart On A New Crop Of Founders Shaking Up Atlantic Canada’s Startup Ecosystem
- Fredericton Chamber CEO Krista Ross On Supporting Businesses Through Tough Times