Finances: Hampton crunches numbers with 2010 budget in sight

C6

Erin Dwyer
For the Telegraph-Journal

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HAMPTON - Some $390,000 in road damage caused by flooding in mid-October could have an impact on Hampton's 2010 budget.

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Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal

Mayor Ken Chorley of Hampton hopes the province will provide financial relief from flooding episodes that may have an impact on the town’s 2010 budget.

Mayor Ken Chorley said the town had operated within its budget this year until 116 millimetres of rain fell on the Saint John region Oct. 14, causing brooks to swell and culverts to overflow around town.

"We thought everything was going fine and it was, until this," he said.

The heavy rains washed out several roads, including Greenfield Drive, the Pickwauket Road and Highway 121 to Bloomfield. Since then, the town's works crews have been working feverishly to replace culverts and repair roads.

"They've been working around the clock," said Chorley.

The cost of repairs is estimated at around $390,000, said Richard Malone, the town's chief administrative officer, with the most damage on Highway 121. There, the town's works crews had to dig down 30 feet to reach the damaged culvert that ran under the road.

"It's one heck of a hole," the mayor said.

But the town is hoping to recoup some of that money from the province since two of the damaged roads - the Pickawauket Road (Route 845) and Highway 121 - are provincially designated highways.

"We've requested that the province assist us on this," Malone said, "but we haven't heard anything back at this point."

It was the second time in three months that the town experienced flooding. Many residential streets and basements found themselves under water on Aug. 31 when post-tropical storm Danny dumped 108 mm of rain in the area.

After that storm, the town's works crews asked the province to maintain some of its culverts. But in a copy of a letter to the province's Department of Transportation, Paula Kredl stated that the town's request was all but ignored. The overflow from a blocked culvert caused "significant damage" to the property of Kredl's market, she wrote.

"I don't think this problem was taken seriously."

The flooding damage dominated a recent meeting of the town's finance committee. It met earlier this month for budget deliberations.

"We've been trying to figure out where we are going to get the money to replace all of the culverts and everything else we've had to do," said Chorley. "We do have reserve funds, but we don't have that many reserve funds."

"Who would have ever thought that we'd have that much rain - twice. It's just unheard of."

Budget deliberations are expected to continue over the coming weeks.

While the town's unconditional grant from the province has remained the same at $295,888, it's looking at a 41 per cent drop in the value of building permits issued in the first 10 months of this year compared to last. New housing adds to the town's tax base and the provincial tax assessment, which means more tax dollars for town coffers. Last year, the town saw a whopping 14.05 per cent increase in its provincial tax base assessment, which translated into about $168,000 in additional funding.

But this year's budget faces another challenge - the province's new accountability mechanism.

To stop municipalities from automatically cashing in on rich property assessments, the province has decided to force municipalities to begin their calculations with a tax base based on new construction growth, not rising property values.

In the past, municipal councils such as Hampton's left their tax rate the same, even though people's property assessments had shot way up. This left most people paying much higher tax bills.

Under the guidelines released Friday, the province suggests Hampton town council should be charging its residents $1.1755 for every $100 of assessed property value. This year's rate was $1.25 - a more than seven-cent difference.

Under the new formula, a Hamptonian whose house was assessed at $150,000 this year and last would see a tax savings of $105.

The only way town council can skirt the new rules is by holding a special vote to raise the tax rate back up.

According to the mayor, the town still has to budget for a new fire truck, moneys to restore the town square and the unexpected works maintenance it's had to do over the last couple of months.

Last year, the town maintained the tax rate at $1.25 per $100 of assessed value when surrounding communities lowered their tax rates by a few cents.