ARICHAT: Richmond County added its voice to those opposing the provincial Non-Resident Property Tax and Non-Resident Deed Transfer Tax.
Councillors voted to send a letter, written by Warden Amanda Mombourquette, to Premier Tim Houston – with a copy to Minister of Finance Allan MacMaster, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing John Lohr, Richmond MLA Trevor Boudreau, and Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities President Amanda MacDougall – about their concerns with the new taxes introduced in Budget 2022-2023.
After the regular monthly meeting on April 25 in Arichat, Mombourquette said this will have a big effect on the municipality.
“There are lot of folks here who own ancestral properties; they’ve been in their family for many years, there’s nobody living here right now, but they come every year, or least as often as they can pandemic-wise,” she noted. “Now, all of a sudden, they are faced with an immense tax burden that they never had before, and the affordability of being able to maintain these properties is really in question for a lot of people.”
The warden said this will also hit new property owners.
“What happens if someone wants to build a new property here? If the problem that we’re trying to solve is affordable housing, why would we be penalizing someone who’s adding to the housing stock that didn’t exist before, as opposed to coming in and buying an existing property?”
Mombourquette said this comes at a bad time for municipalities.
“We recognize that property tax is our revenue stream, it’s really our only revenue stream outside of grants, and it’s really worrisome to see the province dip its toes in those waters, so to speak when, right now, we are very cash-strapped. We have infrastructure deficits,” she noted. “It’s really concerning for us to see the province starting to look at property tax as a revenue stream that would to go into general revenue, not directly come back to municipalities to address housing challenges.
Property Valuation Services Corporation, which determines the assessment values for municipalities, has not weighed in, and the warden wants to hear from them.
“I think there’s definitely some additional collaboration that needs to happen here and some additional communication to try to make sure municipalities aren’t in the pinch for this because we will be facing the crunch,” she said. “For us, to be able to work with the province to resolve that problem, we need to have additional consultation in how this was rolled out.”
The warden added that she has heard from many people questioning the new taxes.
“I’m hearing from realtors who are seeing sales go sideways, immediately,” she added. “This is, absolutely, a hot button issue, and I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to work with the province to figure out some kind of happy medium to make sure that we’re not deploying this in way that there are so many unintended consequences that it becomes extremely punitive for people to try to move back to rural Nova Scotia.”