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Ten days before his election victory, Chris Titus sat alone at a table in front of several hundred empty seats.

Unlike the other at-large candidates, he had taken the stage for the Telegraph-Journal debate a half hour early. He sat there thinking and occasionally scribbling notes.

What was in those notes is anyone's guess. But the incumbent city councillor and Crown prosecutor attended the ward debates earlier in the campaign and knew there was going to be a question about high taxes, a bugbear of plenty of voters and the editorial board.

When the question came, Titus gave one of the most reasonable answers. At the first meeting of the new council, he would sponsor a motion asking the city to hire a financial expert to look at the existing rate - $1.795 for every $100 of assessed property - and see if it could be lowered, taking into account rising property values and tax base growth.

"Promises at election time must be backed by a plan," he said. "Hollow promises get us nowhere."

Whatever Titus' flaws - critics call him arrogant, rude and pompous - it's hard to argue he breaks promises and doesn't follow through. The new Saint John Energy building, transit operations centre and police headquarters are going ahead in no small part because of his powers of persuasion.

His tax motion will be on the new council's agenda, guaranteed. The question is whether the other council members can stomach a tax cut, which would mean less money for services or greater pressure on city staff to squeeze value out of a dollar.

The newly elected council is not a business-oriented bunch and at first whiff gives off a tax-and-spend aroma.

Aside from Joe Mott, the most strident about cutting taxes, and Stephen Chase, who's pushing for an auditor general, the rest lean more toward social policy.

Mayor-elect Ivan Court, and councillors-elect Carl Killen and Gary Sullivan have teaching backgrounds. Peter McGuire is a civil servant in mental health, and Donnie Snook works with underprivileged children. Bill Farren is a Moosehead employee and labour candidate. Bruce Court and Patty Higgins (if she survives a vote recount) are best known for their fight against the LNG tax break and the pipeline through Rockwood Park. Court was a train dispatcher who retired on a disability pension, and Higgins provides private care for seniors.

Does this mean voters elected a left-leaning crew that would never entertain a tax cut? Hardly. If anything, these candidates won because they knocked on a lot of doors and listened to what people said. During the debates, the candidates acknowledged that seniors are fed up with taxes and afraid of losing their homes. There's also widespread anger over Irving Oil's getting a tax break when ordinary folk are getting pounded by higher tax bills.

It'll be hard to dump on Titus' motion without giving wider tax relief serious consideration.

Last year, for instance, Saint John's tax base - the value of all taxable properties - grew by 7.6 per cent. This gave the city far more money because council didn't lower the tax rate.

Brent Staeben of Service New Brunswick's assessment branch said Thursday 39 per cent, or a little more than a third, of the growth was from new building construction.

The rest - roughly 61 per cent - was caused by a hike in property values and assessments on existing homes and businesses. In other words, more than half the extra money the city raked in came from people paying higher taxes.

"We'd be happy to walk council through this and get them answers," Staeben said, adding provincial officials would do it free of charge. "Maybe after they hear from us they'll still want to hire an expert, but maybe they won't."

Free advice on how to avoid more tax hikes? That's something every councillor, regardless of political orientation, should be happy to hear.

John Chilibeck is a Telegraph-Journal reporter writing about issues that affect the Saint John region. He can be reached at chilibeck.john@telegraphjournal.com or by calling 645-3267. His column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.