The provincial government is at odds with mayors of the largest cities in New Brunswick on the freeze next year in property tax assessments.
The mayors want a meeting with the province and Saint John mayor Don Darling says the city is facing a $5-million problem caused by the freeze and one option is to raise the city’s tax rate but Darling calls that a ‘death blow’ for the city.
“We have the unfortunate worry about the unconditional grant and the impact of a declining population so we’re speculating that we have an issue somewhere in the range of $5-million and that’s going to be very, very difficult for us to deal with,” says Darling.
“And secondly we’ll have to cut services and that also is going to be very, very difficult. So we do not have the financial strength to weather a $5-million reduction in our revenues.”
The province argues the freeze is only for one year and, as such, will not have significant impact. Darling says he respectfully disagrees with that.
