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CTV News
5 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Free housing unit design plans rolled out in Cape Breton Regional Municipality
It was an open house of sorts on Monday on a new form of housing being proposed for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM). Fifteen designs, ranging from single units to a six unit multi-plex are now being offered to residents through the federal Housing Accelerator Fund. The designs were on display on Monday outside City Hall in Sydney. Darlene Leblanc, a resident from Gabarus, N.S., said she liked what she saw for the most part, but wondered whether the proposed housing units would work as well for rural living as they might in urban areas. 'Because they want to be able to incorporate the sewage and water, whereas where I'm in a rural area I wanted to get more information on rural,' Leblanc said. 'Because I would have to have a well and septic put in.' The CBRM said the plans are free and were designed to meet local building codes. A spokesperson for CBRM, Jenna MacQueen, added they have also been fast-tracked in hopes people might be able to start building sooner in a city that has been told it needs at least 1,000 new housing units by next year. 'We're hopeful that this will actually help address some of the housing issues people have experienced in the CBRM,' MacQueen said. 'We're hearing of a lot of people who want maybe an accessory dwelling unit in their backyard, but they don't know how much a plan could cost or even where to begin and we're helping to remove that barrier for people.' Northside-area Coun. Gordon MacDonald was also hopeful these types of units might help when it comes to the municipality's housing shortage, even though he had questions at first about how the proposed new units might fit into existing streets and subdivisions. 'Well, I guess initially when any kind of design comes forward you're kind of concerned about how it's going to fit into the neighbourhoods, but these designs are laid out and they look great,' MacDonald said after viewing the designs. 'Most neighbourhoods, they would fit right in.' Leblanc said while she needs more information first, there is another option that might be worth considering for herself. 'Maybe I want to sell a chunk of my land and build a couple of those on it, have a road going and see if it would be worth my while,' she said. The CBRM says more public engagement sessions - as part of its Housing Strategy - are coming up Wednesday and Thursday in Sydney, North Sydney and Glace Bay. For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
CBC
13-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
CBRM councillors call for thorough review of fire departments, equipment and staffing
Councillors in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality have called for a full review of volunteer and career fire services over concerns about the number of departments and the cost of staffing and equipping them. This week, Coun. Gordon MacDonald called for a thorough review following talks over a lengthy list of issues raised at last week's meeting. "We know through our discussions at the committee of the whole last week that there are many deficiencies and inefficiencies happening in fire services," he said Tuesday. "We've really got to start identifying where these issues are, what [are] the issues that they're causing to fire services, where the resources are needed the most [and] how best we are able to get those resources to protect the citizens of the CBRM." Last week, the Glace Bay volunteer fire department threw up its hands and ceded budgeting of its operations entirely to CBRM's fire service. At the same time, the municipality's fire chief and deputy chief warned council that more than 20 fire trucks in various stations across the municipality are nearly 25 years old and are about to reach the end of their useful life and could cost at least $20 million to replace. Council also heard from the regional fire chiefs association that volunteer ranks are getting desperately slim. Councillors unanimously agreed to have the chief administrative officer conduct a review, but they did not set a timeline on the review or determine how it should be done. In 2016, CBRM commissioned a consultant to review the fire service, resulting in what's known as the Manitou report. It recommended centralizing control and funding of the entire fire service and eliminating some stations, but that has not happened. Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald said that report would be a good starting point. "We need to provide our services [as] fast and efficient to our residents as possible and currently that's not happening and that review is much needed," he said. Two stations in Sydney are staffed around the clock by unionized career firefighters. CBRM also has 32 volunteer departments throughout the county. Three of them — in the former towns of Glace Bay, New Waterford and North Sydney — are considered composite stations that are owned and run by volunteers but also have a full-time career firefighter on hand around the clock. Fire service officials say the rising cost of firefighting equipment and vehicles has made it unaffordable for many volunteer departments to operate as they used to, citing that as the main reason Glace Bay handed its budgeting over to the municipality. CBRM does provide grants for equipment and vehicles, but Deputy Chief Craig MacNeil said a basic truck now costs around $900,000 without the modifications required for local equipment and needs. He would not say that CBRM has too many departments and vehicles, but he has been asking volunteer departments about the possibility of downsizing the fleet. List of pressures going to province "We have 130 pieces of equipment right now in CBRM," he said. "That's the exact same amount of equipment [Halifax Regional Municipality] has. We have a lot of fire trucks and a lot of fire stations." MacNeil said even if a 25-year-old truck still runs, the insurance industry considers it as being at the end of its life, and keeping it in service could cost the municipality and property owners more in insurance premiums. Council has not decided how it will handle the 22 aging vehicles but has agreed to review and consider the list, and Mayor Cecil Clarke said it will be added to a list of financial pressures that CBRM intends to take to the provincial government. The overall review is also expected to consider volunteer numbers, which are a concern as well, Westmount fire Chief Rod Beresford told council last week. Beresford, who chairs CBRM's association of regional chiefs, said even in departments where numbers are higher, the volunteers are not all fully trained. In Westmount, a suburb on the opposite side of the harbour from Sydney, only one volunteer works in the area during the day, Beresford said. And a neighbouring department with more volunteers does not always have a fully trained complement, he said, so backup firefighters might be able to arrive on scene with a truck, but might not be trained to fight a large structure fire. That's why he asked for and got approval for an automatic response from career firefighters in Sydney for any call involving a possible or working structure fire in Westmount's territory. Meanwhile, a provincewide review of fire governance that's also underway is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Supreme Court rules SWEPT tax constitutional, settling one school funding issue
Supreme Court Justices Patrick Donovan, Gordon MacDonald, and Melissa Countway hear oral arguments in Rand v. State of New Hampshire, on Nov. 13, 2024. (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin) New Hampshire's Statewide Education Property Tax is equal and uniform and does not violate the New Hampshire Constitution, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, in a blow to state taxpayers who had sued the state and alleged unfairness. In a 3-1 decision, the court held that the tax, known as the SWEPT, is administered fairly and evenly by the Department of Revenue Administration, even though wealthier towns might collect more than they need for their schools and keep the excess. 'Accordingly, regarding the 'excess SWEPT' issue, we hold that the SWEPT scheme is constitutional under Part II, Article 5 because it is 'administered in a manner that is equal in valuation and uniform in rate throughout the State,'' wrote Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald in the majority opinion. The SWEPT is a mandatory process in which towns collect property taxes to pay for their schools. Under law, the state sets a goal each year for New Hampshire cities and towns to collect a combined $363 million, and each year the Department of Revenue Administration sets a tax rate per $1,000 of property value that towns must collect. But that statewide tax rate typically results in towns with higher property values collecting far more from the SWEPT than towns with lower property values, and sometimes more than is needed to fund their schools. When the tax was enacted in 1999, those wealthier towns were required to relinquish any excess SWEPT revenues to the state to be redistributed to needier towns through the state's adequacy formula. But in 2011, then-Gov. John Lynch signed a law to allow those towns to keep the excess, after pushback by some communities that considered themselves 'donor towns.' Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Rand v. State, had argued that because the current system allows wealthy towns to collect more in property taxes than they need, and because those towns can use the excess to lower the overall percentage of property taxes paid, the tax is neither equal nor uniform in practice. Residents of towns with lower property values pay much higher local property tax rates as a percentage than those in wealthier towns, plaintiffs said. Lawyers for the plaintiffs — who included Natalie LaFlamme as well as John Tobin and Andru Volinsky, two attorneys on the winning side of the landmark Claremont school funding decisions in the 1990s — had brought a motion for 'declaratory judgment' to the Supreme Court. That motion was intended to allow the Supreme Court to rule quickly on the constitutionality of the SWEPT tax before the rest of the case receives a hearing in superior court, in order to lay questions about the SWEPT tax to rest. The court did put the question to rest Tuesday, but not in the plaintiffs' favor. MacDonald held that the SWEPT is administered evenly because the Department of Revenue Administration applies the same flat tax rate each year to all cities and towns, wealthy or poor. Whether those towns keep the excess revenue or not, and whether some towns raise enough to pay for schools or not, does not affect whether the underlying tax is unequal and does not make it unconstitutional, MacDonald wrote. In doing so, MacDonald dismissed evidence from an expert indicating the difference in effective property taxes between towns. 'The plaintiffs do not dispute that under the SWEPT, as administered, taxpayers are actually assessed at a uniform rate. That concludes the constitutional inquiry,' MacDonald wrote. 'The 'effective rates' in the expert's data reflect, at most, an indirect effect of municipalities retaining excess SWEPT revenue, as the statutory scheme permits. Theoretical indirect effects of the scheme on municipalities are not relevant to the analysis under Part II, Article 5.' Associate Justices Melissa Countway and Patrick Donovan concurred with MacDonald. But Senior Associate Justice James Bassett dissented on the question of the constitutionality of SWEPT. Responding to MacDonald, Bassett argued that under SWEPT, taxpayers in poorer towns do face disparities in taxation compared to those in wealthier towns. 'The impact of the SWEPT scheme on taxpayers in excess SWEPT communities is anything but 'theoretical' or 'indirect': the effective SWEPT rate reduction those taxpayers enjoy is real and direct,' Bassett wrote. 'The impact of the SWEPT scheme on taxpayers in other communities that do not generate excess SWEPT is also real and direct: those taxpayers enjoy no comparable reduction in their effective SWEPT rate.' The fifth associate justice, Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, has been on administrative leave from the court since July 2024, pending a criminal case against her for allegedly interfering with the criminal investigation of her husband. The decision overrules parts of an earlier decision by Rockingham Superior Court Judge David Ruoff, who ruled in 2023 that the SWEPT was illegal. The ruling does not end the Rand case; it merely answers plaintiffs' attempts to receive a declaratory judgment on SWEPT. The rest of the Rand case alleges that New Hampshire's adequacy formula, which currently gives a minimum of $4,182 per student to public schools that need aid, is far too low to pay for an adequate education and is unconstitutional. The court did not rule on that question Tuesday. But it is currently considering a different school funding case, Contoocook Valley School District v. New Hampshire, in which a number of school districts have also alleged that the adequacy formula is too low to provide an adequate education. Oral arguments in that case, known as the ConVal case, took place at the Supreme Court in December. Ruoff has also ruled that the state's formula is unconstitutionally low. The Supreme Court's expected ruling in the ConVal decision could affect how the rest of the Rand lawsuit plays out in superior court, now that the constitutionality of SWEPT has been affirmed by the high court. In an order sent in October, the court indicated that it is unlikely to overturn the Claremont decisions, in which the Supreme Court established the constitutional requirement that the state of New Hampshire ensure an adequate education. Tuesday's ruling did include a partial victory for plaintiffs. The court held that use of 'negative tax rates,' in which the Department of Revenue Administration allows unincorporated towns that don't have school districts to offset their SWEPT tax with negative rates to effectively raise no SWEPT revenue, is unconstitutional. But the court did not direct the state to stop setting negative tax rates. Instead, it said the process for doing so, and fixing the unconstitutional law, is in the hands of the legislative and executive branches. 'Resolving the constitutional infirmity in the State's practice of setting negative local tax rates is the responsibility of the other co-equal branches of government,' MacDonald wrote.
CBC
27-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Family of missing Cape Breton man hopeful their search is over
After nearly a year of scouring a wide swath of Cape Breton Regional Municipality, the family of Justin MacDonald is hopeful the search for the 34-year-old man is finally over. MacDonald has been missing since July 2024 and police consider his case a homicide. Three people have been charged in the case. His family members have been on the scene of a police investigation along a rural stretch of Morley Road since Monday, when possible human remains were found. MacDonald's uncle, Gordon MacDonald, said the family is anxiously awaiting identification of the remains. "With this find, we're just hoping. We can't say anything definitive because of the forensic situation, but we're hopeful that it may be him," he said Tuesday at the investigation site about 20 kilometres south of Sydney. Since his son's disappearance, Ken MacDonald has been searching continuously and posting on social media asking the public for information that could lead to answers. He and his wife, Peggy, would not comment on the new investigation Tuesday, saying they'll wait for confirmation that their son has been found. Police said they will not comment on the investigation until they can confirm an identity. Gordon MacDonald said the months since his nephew's disappearance have been "like a horror show" that never ends. "He's been somewhere," MacDonald said of his nephew. "Knowing that he's no longer with us and to still have to search has been probably one of the hardest situations a family ever would have to endure." The family needs closure, he said. "That's absolutely a necessity for the family, to be able to bring Justin home and take him to where he belongs and put him to rest." Police and the medical examiner have asked the public to stay away from the site of the investigation. On Tuesday, a drone could be seen in the air. A search was also underway in the nearby woods, which was bordered with yellow police tape. Investigators said earlier this year they were searching a wide area stretching from North Sydney to Irish Vale, N.S., for signs of Justin MacDonald. MacDonald was last seen on July 7, 2024, around 11 p.m. local time at the Irving gas station in North Sydney, where he appeared on the store's security camera. His vehicle was found about 25 kilometres away in the Ormond Crescent area of Mira Road. In December, police charged Mitchell George McPhee, 38, with manslaughter in MacDonald's disappearance and with the robbery and assault of another man. Shortly after that, Ryan Joseph Pike, 36, was charged with second-degree murder and robbery, and on Dec. 31, Aaron Curtis Mickey, 45, was charged with second-degree murder, robbery and four firearm-related offences. Their cases are still before the courts. Gordon MacDonald said Tuesday the court process has been "excruciatingly painful" for the family.
