The latest city council meeting on Tuesday December 9 has provided the media with much fodder. Among the blunders was a report from city staff that studied increasing transit service to suburban and rural areas and recommended that the cost be paid for more by those residents who live in those areas. The suggestion follows the ongoing effort by the tax-reform committee to introduce a service-based tax system in the city instead of the current system that doesn’t take into consideration the cost of providing certain services in one area or another, and the availability of those services when the tax is paid.

City councilors expressed their ‘concerns’ about staff’s recommendation, to say the least of their reaction.

What they might not know is that Metro Transit already undertakes a service-based cost/revenue structure with certain parts of their service, but I doubt many people know this.

Let’s take the example of when the U-Pass was implemented to provide Halifax students with unlimited bus usage. In the negotiation process, the student union and the university administration agreed to impose a flat bus pass fee on all full-time students at SMU, regardless if they use the bus or not. In return, SMU asked Metro Transit to provide better service to the university, and unlimited access for 8 months of the year to students who want to use the bus.

Ultimately, a deal was reached where SMU students paid for the full cost of the extra servicing, which was collected through the annual UPass fee. This is public information available in articles that appeared in the university student paper in 2003 when the UPass was launched.

SMU students ultimately ended up paying for the full (unsubsidized) annual cost of the additional services, regardless of the fact that the buses were used by more than SMU students alone, and were existing buses that are already subsidized as part of the transit money the city gives to metro transit. While seemingly unfair, the overall benefit outweighed the cost. Transit ridership gradually increased as more students adopted the new mode and left their cars at home. Less parking spaces were required in and around the university, allowing for more academic buildings and less street congestion.

The precedent has been set for a pay-per-service system. And while the cost of the pass was higher than what it should be, everybody won in the end, and all universities in Halifax launched the UPass in following years under the same fee structure.

So, let’s talk about the application of a service-based tax system in relation to transit services.

A service-based tax is a good idea, especially for transit. Transit is one of those services that can easily be linked to the elusive goal of good and environmentally-sustainable urban design. And so the question of transit planning is ultimately linked to the question of property taxes and their effect on housing distribution and sustainable service densities.

I understand why rural and suburban residents want good public transit options (who doesn’t!). But it must be provided at a higher expense to their tax area (albeit, not without first resolving the question of affordable housing for low-income families, as described further in this comment).

Extending bus lines to every nook and cranny in HRM, then loading the cost of that on all residents regardless of their location, is a recipe that awards suburban sprawl. This backward and reactive strategy has no place in planning a city ready for the challenges of the 21st century; A city with an eye for a prosperous future.

Our local government should work more at creating tax and service incentives to encourage people to live together more sustainably in higher-density communities. HRM staff knows this, common sense dictates this, and scientific evidence supports this.

Yet, people are reluctant to swallow penalties for unsustainable residential choices. They want to live in the quiet country-side large house with a sprawling back yard overlooking a lake, AND they want all the services that a city dweller with smaller quarters and higher rents/taxes gets, AND they want good roads and transportation options to travel back and forth from their oasis to their city work, AND they want to pay less tax than urban dwellers!!

Effect on Low-Income Families:

The argument that charging a higher tax to deliver services to rural or less-populated areas will negatively affect low-income families (who can’t afford to live in the urban core) is a critique that has been misplaced.  This is an issue that relates to the lack of affordable housing for low-income families, not an argument against service-based taxation.

The potential negative effects on low-income households can be solved with a more equitable tax structure in the urban core along with a commitment by local government to provide affordable housing for low income families throughout the urban districts.

Affordable housing and services can exist in the urban core only with a service-based tax system that allows city hall to redirect its tax revenues into creating housing solutions instead of exhausting city budgets on building and maintaining extensive road networks to service few residents scattered all around on the outskirts of a sprawling city.  The city can also use the new tax structure to provide tax incentives to encourage (or even mandate) developers to include affordable or mixed-income housing within their development projects.

Think about it: a low-income family can now live in the urban core, AND take advantage of lower service costs (due to the higher number of people who are splitting that cost between them in higher density urban areas), AND pay an equivalent tax rate to that which they were paying while living in rural districts.  Wouldn’t that be a good thing? They can live closer to work, have better access to public transportation, schools, health care, entertainment, etc.  These are all factors that contribute to that coveted ‘quality of life’ index that Nova Scotia promotes as one of the main attractions to living here.

The current tax system only helps to encourage the creation of ghettoized districts, where low income families are forced to collect in specific areas due to the financial incentive that the government inadvertently creates with a tax structure based on property value. Just ask France about how well it worked out for them to create suburban pockets in Paris where the cost of living was lower than in the city core!

So let’s not say no to a service-based tax system that will benefit everyone in the long run and will bring us closer to an environmentally, fiscally, and socially sustainable city. Instead, let’s take this opportunity to inscribe urban solutions to the low-income housing situation as part of the overall effort to move the city into the new tax structure. The structure that rewards dense community living with financial savings that allow the implementation of excellent public transit options and everything else that our city deserves.