Saint John Mayor Don Darling delivered his third State of the City address to a business audience in Saint John, NB on July 27th, 2019. (Tamara Steele/CHSJ News)
Saint John’s mayor can recognize the wins of his mandate and the challenges.
He spoke about it with reporters following his State of the City address last week.
“At the end of the day, I appreciate why the citizens of this city are frustrated. Our taxes are too high, our water rates are too high and we have real barriers. Our costs are too high.” Darling said.
“As long as no one wants to give an inch. Our employees, highly respected, our unions, the regional municipalities, our economic development agencies. As long as nobody wants to give an inch, then I think we are going to continue to hold ourselves back.”
Destination: Growth. The main goal of the Roadmap for Smart Growth is to improve the City of Saint John’s ability to achieve and measure growth in three target areas: population,employment and tax base. See how we're doing: https://t.co/CHJWBfPZOF #growsj pic.twitter.com/IsbsYblVIf
— City of Saint John (@cityofsaintjohn) June 26, 2019
Darling says one of the wins is moving the needle on the city’s population woes.
“We have turned around our population decline, we believe early indicators are about 1200 people so, half of the decline we were dealt in the previous census. The fact that we are going to put the first long term fiscal plan in place.”
Mayor Darling says he is not satisfied yet but, he is proud of the team at city hall.
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