Battle aborted: Shutting down the TAXING NB project

Moving on from an impossible battle for property tax fairness and understanding in New Brunswick

It’s time

I’m moving on entirely from the property tax battle. I’ve contributed to the conversation the best way possible:

here on this blog,
on Substack in the Northumberland Free Press,
on my TAXING NEW BRUNSWICK Facebook page,
on my Taxing NB YouTube channel,
in the media,
through letters I’ve sent to provincial politicians, and
in exchanges with municipal politicians.

However, I have little confidence that any of this battle will impact decision-makers or the public at large, especially those among the latter who remain convinced that increasing assessments are the main problem in our broken property tax system. (Hint: they’re not.)

The Holt government has (unsurprisingly) never responded to anything I’ve said or done, and conversations I’ve had with some municipal officials indicate that they truly either don’t understand why the system is problematic or are quite cognizant that the system, as it is, allows them to dodge accountability for their spending. Yay!

Misunderstanding, malfeasance, or both?

One mayor with whom I spoke in the course of this protracted battle was firmly convinced that most of NB’s municipalities operate on a revenue-neutral basis (i.e., taxes don’t increase just because assessments do), when the reality is that they do anything but.

Of course, without exposure to any other kind of system, this mayor had no context for how a property tax system could and should operate (no matter how I tried to explain it).

However, the final nail-in-the-coffin battle moment was how one particular municipal councillor (whom I know a bit and from whom I expected far better, to be frank) answered my question of why it’s acceptable for people’s taxes to increase via increased assessments but not via increased tax rates:

[Increased assessments are] considered more honourable apparently. If I raise taxes I’m an enemy. If the market assessments go up, it’s considered the system working as normal and protecting people’s equity. Those are the rules LOL, and I didn’t write them.

An honest but quintessentially political answer. “This is the way we’ve always done it. Why change?”

This is when I realized two things: One is that I’m bang-on correct about how much municipalities love not being held accountable for their spending; the other is that I’m wasting my time trying to make any progress with this impossible battle.

NB’s tax-rate-driven system is a scourge deeply embedded in people’s thinking, with taxpayers screaming about it on the one hand and municipal politicians loving it just the way it is on the other (and the Province feeding that municipal malfeasance with documents like this one).

The stink is worse than we think

And all the columns, letters, and videos written by a battle-hardened, tilting-at-windmills former assessor will not change that until people start holding politicians accountable for their decisions.

As a result, I’ve shut down the Taxing NB YouTube channel and the TNB Facebook page. I will leave my TAXING NEW BRUNSWICK book on Amazon for another tax season (because I believe it can help people), but I won’t promote it or hold any seminars like I did last tax season.

I’ll also leave the columns I’ve written on this topic here on The Prairie Maritimer website in case readers (or, God forbid, politicians) want to reference them.

They’ll be worth checking out again once the Holt government completes its property tax reform project. I’m sorry to say that I’ve little faith that they’ll do what they need to do to change the system the way it needs to be changed. They’re not consulting widely and are too secretive about what they have in mind, so my guess is that they’ll offer a band-aid solution at best.

Battle or not, I hope they prove me wrong.

Other writing projects

On a personal level, I want to direct my energies to other writing projects rather than this endless battle, and I look forward to doing much more of that. If you’re interested in my other writing, please peruse the rest of this site and/or follow The Prairie Maritimer on Facebook.

I appreciate everyone’s interest in my perspectives over the past year.

When next year’s tax notice arrives, please remember to take up your own battle and scream at the right people.

It’s the ones who come to the door looking for your vote.

Battle aborted: Shutting down the TAXING NB project

It’s time

Misunderstanding, malfeasance, or both?

The stink is worse than we think

Other writing projects

Other articles on assessment & taxation

(most recent article first)