Some Saint Johners worry about city's future as council ponders ideas to tackle $11M deficit

A Saint John business owner and community activist says she's worried about the future of the city, given the drastic measures council is considering to deal with the $11-million deficit.

Some of the 60 recommendations presented by the city manager earlier this week include: increasing the tax rate, introducing a levy for events, putting tolls on city streets for non-residents during business hours, cutting back on snowplowing, selling the Canada Games Aquatic Centre and closing an ice rink.

Anne McShane, who owns the Feel Good Store in the uptown, said she has followed the city's sustainability discussions closely and thought she would be prepared for the proposals.

But she was shocked by how many were put forward and the "uncertainty" associated with each one.

"There's big ranges of what could happen," she said, citing a few examples: "We could get $17 [million] to $48 million out of Saint John Energy [or] we could sell Saint John Energy. We could have a one-cent tax rate [or] we could have a 10-cent increase in the tax rate."

"It's so fluid that it's even difficult to get a grasp of — what does the community look like at the end of this?"

McShane said she appreciates the transparency of the process, but she's also "terrified."

Fellow community booster and urbanist Morgan Lanigan was also struck by the "massive" list and some of the smaller budget items, such as cutting lifeguards, which would save about $20,000.

It illustrates "how far we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to be able to pull pennies together," he said. "So that very fine level of things that we have to get is how desperate we are at this point to be able to get out of this situation."

The proposed $2-million cut to transit services is among the most concerning, said Lanigan.

Although it's an "easy" line item to cut by simply taking buses off the road, the numbers don't show the impacts, such as people not being able to get to their jobs or get their children to dentist appointments, he said.

"And what if we go through this exercise to try and cut $2 million from transit only to find that we're going to collapse transit by making those changes? That's even more detrimental down the road, right?"

Such cuts can lessen quality of life, said McShane.

"And livability is how we attract people to increase our residential portion of our tax revenue, which is the most significant line item that we have in terms of revenue generation.

"So if we start to impact quality of life things, we're impacting our bottom line, and in the end … this could end up having a snowball effect."

It's a pattern Saint John has followed for years, said Lanigan. Cuts make it difficult to attract growth and drive up the cost of living in the city, which encourages people to move to the suburbs, and creates a vicious cycle, he said.

Lanigan said he hopes this isn't just another "budget-cutting exercise" and that council will focus on creating a better future for the city.

Council is expected to decide within 60 days which cuts and fees it will approve, when it's scheduled to pass the 2020-21 budget.