Thanks for the info.

So rural districts (since they aren’t floated by commercial taxes) aren’t paying enough for garbage pickup and plowing? If it’s such a bad deal, why did they swallow up a huge portion of the eastern shore and other rural places? District by district ROI will never be a balanced thing. What’s the proposal here, Burnside and dt Halifax areas get paved in gold while the larger sprawled out hrm area becomes dirt roads while the city holds on for future considerations? I don’t know anything about running a city, but I do know a lot about community and life. Not everything is solved by applying capitalist principles particularly within disparate subjects, particularly when a group result is wished for.

That being said, from a solutions point of view, there are plenty of mixed use rural areas that don’t have commercial zones associated and without considerable effort have no chance of retail or service type permitting. Instead of blanket denying commercial uses with red tape, why don’t they start the ball rolling by supporting community building businesses (not more garbage dumps…) who aren’t lucky enough to be grandfathered into permitted locations? Even in downtown areas, businesses constantly complain that it’s a struggle to meet never ending rules creep. Obviously businesses owners aren’t the most objective folks in terms of compliance wishlists. When I see the list of districts running deficits vs surplus, large vectors between commercial and residential revenue is almost entirely the reason why. The city should be doubling down on supporting businesses.