The Last Four Years

The Last Four Years Hello, I am Rankin MacSween and, today, I am announcing that I am a candidate to be Mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. I recognize that CBRM’s incumbent Mayor, Cecil Clarke, is very personally popular. He is extremely well liked and personable. My sense, though, as I have talked to people across the region about their hopes and concerns for our region, is that the predominant feeling is that CBRM can and must do better. People are very hopeful about the future but the vast majority seem to recognize that not much has improved in our circumstances during the past four years. Indeed, in many ways, the last four years have been about lost opportunities to make a real difference. In 2012, Cecil Clarke made dozens of commitments to the voters of this region. Some of the more fundamental of these commitments have simply evaporated. The main political commitment from the 2012 campaign was that Cecil would be able to strike a far better relationship with the federal and provincial governments which, in turn, would enable a greatly increased level of investment in infrastructure projects across the CBRM. I think we can agree that this simply has not happened! 1 The City Charter is nowhere to be seen; the proposed $300 million federal-provincial-municipal infrastructure program has been completely abandoned; the idea of the CBRM being the most business friendly municipality in Atlantic Canada somehow is not supported by the fact that we have been evaluated as the third worst place to live in Canada; and the CBRM’s signature economic infrastructure initiative, the construction of a second berth at the cruise terminal, has been in limbo for several years. Mayor Clarke has made the development of a container terminal in Sydney Harbour a key priority, but four years have elapsed without real achievement. The agreement with Harbor- Port Development Partners is, to say the least, unusual and like the other commercial port related agreements considered by the CBRM Council it was rushed through Council with considerable haste. The first port-related commercial agreement to be considered by the CBRM during Cecil’s term in office involved the Canadian Maritime Engineering acquisition of the Archibald’s Wharf property. I think most of you are familiar with the decision. 2 Many months after Council rushed the decision through in record time, it is still not clear why CBRM felt such urgency to sell such an important recreational property in the downtown area of North Sydney. In its rush to convey the property, CBRM completely ignored the legitimate concerns of the residents of North Sydney who wanted the site retained for the recreational enjoyment of the public. This is not my idea of making this region the most business friendly region in Atlantic Canada. My belief is that in everything our elected representatives do, they must first ask if they are improving the quality of life in the CBRM. In this instance, my answer would have been no. The CME proposal to acquire the Archibald’s Wharf property does not enhance the quality of life in North Sydney or in CBRM. I think the appropriate role for Mayor and Council is to find an approach that promotes commercial development without sacrificing those attributes of a community that make it appealing for individuals and families, for young and old. I think the Mayor and Council clearly failed the people of North Sydney in this matter. Also on the port, the Mayor, while promising in his 2012 campaign that he would work with the Sydney Ports Corporation, an independent community organization that had been very 3 successful in growing port related business since 2000, actually convinced Council to disband the organization and create a new Port of Sydney Development Corporation. Why do this? The Port of Sydney Development Corporation is actually a smaller version of CBRM Council minus any of the Mayor’s detractors on Council. Far from being a forum for partnership and collaboration with a variety of port stakeholders, besides the Chief Administrative Officer, all of the members on the current Board of Directors are CBRM elected officials and all of the meetings take place in private. At the very least, it is certainly against the spirit of openness and transparency promised by Cecil in 2012. Objectively, though, maybe my evaluation of the CBRM’s achievements or lack thereof during the past four years is inaccurate. Perhaps the economic data show the improvements that have been made by CBRM under Cecil’s leadership. First, let us consider the employment data for Cape Breton. Comparing the level of total employment in July, 2012 (in the last few months of John Morgan’s term) to the comparable figure for July, 2016, total employment in Cape Breton has fallen by more than 6,000 through this period and the size of the labour force has declined by more than 7,700 people. It is hard to argue that this reflects progress. In fact, quite the opposite. 4 Give credit where credit is due, Cecil’s great gift has been to distract people for four years from the reality of the economic decline by having them focus on the promise of a container terminal, but think about this. Even if a terminal is announced prior to the election, do we really expect that it will result in the creation of 6,000 jobs? That is the number of jobs that have been lost during Cecil’s time in office. Can we afford another four years of this approach? Is this the record of someone who should be re-elected? By the Mayor’s own admission, CBRM’s property tax rates are the highest in the province and none of the CBRM rates have been reduced during the past four years. To provide a clear sense of the disparity, specific examples are helpful. For residents living in the County of Cape Breton, who own a $100,000 residential property, the annual property tax bill is $1,920. For a comparable property in Richmond County, the tax bill is $780; for a comparable property in Halifax County, the tax bill is $1,160. If you use a $100,000 property in North Sydney as an example, residential property tax would be $2100 annually compared to someone living in Antigonish who would pay $1,000 annually. If the property were located in Kentville, the tax burden annually would be $1400. 5 In terms of commercial taxation, the owner of a $100,000 commercial property in North Sydney pays in excess of $5,200 annually in property tax as compared to a comparable property in Antigonish which would have a total tax burden less than half this amount. Economies depend upon small businesses, those with fewer than twenty-five employees, as the engine of growth. If small businesses have a supportive economic environment, they will grow and develop; if they don’t have a supportive economic environment, relatively few businesses will be created and fewer still will endure and grow. The economic data show that CBRM’s economic environment is not conducive to the creation and development of small business. Unfortunately, Mayor and Council seem not to recognize the onerous tax burden being placed on CBRM residents and business owners and, instead, CBRM’s total spending continues to grow each year. In fact, during the past four years, CBRM’s total operating expenditures have increased by 6.5% while CBRM’s population has fallen by an estimated 4%. Asking fewer people to pay higher and higher and higher tax burdens every year is simply not sustainable. Since 1995, CBRM’s population has declined by an estimated 20,000 people and annually the region’s population is declining by an average of 1,000 people, which is equivalent to the size of the Town of Louisbourg. 6 And yet, CBRM has no population strategy and Cecil’s one hundred promises for 2016 lack any hint of the urgency of the decline. Make no mistake about it, this is a crisis and must be treated as such. In short, there is no economic measurement that I have been able to find that in any way suggests that the past four years have been good ones for CBRM. On the contrary, we are losing ground on all fronts. The CBRM, as of 2016, is caught in a vicious cycle of high unemployment, declining population, and very high tax rates. I am afraid the one hundred items listed in Cecil’s campaign brochure are unlikely to address this predicament. More importantly, as significant as a port announcement may be at some point in the future, reliance on that and that alone to address CBRM’s severe economic situation is a very dangerous strategy. It is, in my opinion, irresponsible. The focus of my campaign, therefore, is on a very limited number of issues that I believe to be fundamental to building a viable, competitive, attractive, and healthy CBRM. The starting point for me is to break the vicious economic cycle that has enveloped this region. Although a number of measures are required, I believe the starting point must be a commitment to bring our property tax rates in line with other jurisdictions in Nova Scotia. 7 Currently, we are taxing our region out of investment and out of growth. This must end. If elected, I will reduce the tax burden in a measured and responsible way but my commitment is significant, consistent reductions in all CBRM property tax rates in each of the next four years and beyond until our rates are in line with those in the Halifax capital region.

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