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FALL RIVER\/MUSQ. VALLEY:<\/strong> The local HRM councillor says she would not support a 5.9 per cent property rate hike for residents in the municipality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cathy Deagle Gammon, who represents Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley, was responding to a question during a sit-down interview at her Fall River home on Dec. 2 about the word that staff proposed the increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The projection is 2.9 per cent and a separate three per cent increase to address climate change, including meeting goals of Halifax 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was an amendment made that passed and was made by Mayor Savage to bring that down to 3.9,\u201d she said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t voted on that yet. It\u2019s really interesting that staff come, and they say this is what we think we’re going to need and then for the next couple of months we debate that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy first year of council, it was going to be 1.9 and then it came down to less than that. I wonder about getting people so excited, so worked up about something that I think all of us know it’s going to end up someplace different than that of 5.9.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”31″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”6″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said if councillors were really honest, they could say they were paying the piper this year for the fact that last year they didn’t make a tax rate difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe difference is that what can happen is what we need to look at,\u201d said Deagle Gammon. \u201cWe know that we need to have money to fund some things that haven’t been funded but were committed to by even the council before this one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paying for those items can only happen out of taxpayer money from surplus reserves or they get debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to really be conscious and we’re deliberating more over the next couple of months,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to be truly clear on living within our means. What does that mean and then what we have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was asked what she would be comfortable with for a property rate increase to residents of HRM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI absolutely don’t know,\u201d answered Deagle Gammon. \u201cUntil we do this work. I think that would be like saying I’ve got a crystal ball and could answer that. If we’re going to be really open, we need to know what we need sustain what we have? What do we need to grow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cClimate change, it’s the black cloud over all of us and if we don’t start to invest in that, we’re already probably 10 years too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”34″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”148″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deagle Gammon said whatever they do now these generations children and grandchild they’re either going to live with a better world or they will live with an awful world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we do not address climate change now, it is outpacing what we do, what can be done in year one, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said she\u2019s been fairly clear with everybody who’s emailed her asking her not to let the property tax increase become reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI’ve also told people that we really do need to do some work on climate change and how we fund that,\u201d Deagle Gammon said. \u201cNobody has that answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”127″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”84″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [adrotate banner=”93″] [adrotate banner=”126″] FALL RIVER\/MUSQ. VALLEY: The local HRM councillor says she would not support a 5.9 per cent property rate hike for residents in the municipality. Cathy Deagle Gammon, who represents Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley, was responding to a question during a sit-down interview at her Fall River home on Dec. 2 about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,957],"tags":[2124,2,50,121,1043,2938],"class_list":["post-25410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","tag-councillor-cathy-deagle-gammon","tag-fall-river","tag-halifax","tag-hrm","tag-musquodoboit-valley","tag-property-rate-hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}