Once again the City of Saint John is celebrating and making an attempt and rekindling of the community in Saint John. The big problem is that Saint John is in a place that makes it next to impossible to revive itself. Saint John is so backed in debt that there is a very little hope. There is the dynamic that Saint John is too big is size to support its population. It also requires large infrastructure funding to support its re-birth. Saint John has a plan that will rejuvenate the water system that only about 2/3 of the population base can take advantage of.
The tax rate is also incredibly high, in fact too high to attract new money. It is also too high to keep those here. In addition, the situation where many jobs that the city attracts are that of less than $30,000/year. Lets figure this out people this works out to less than $2,500/month. That alongside the incredibly large amounts of single parent families. It is almost an entire months pay for just the property taxes, alone. Another, month for insurance and water taxes. Another for 2 for car payments, 1 for electricity, 1 for food. Now we are down to 6 months left.
Now with the amount of pollution and poor air quality there are more people in this city with astheyma and other breathing issues and then the higher than average cancer rates that result in high medical expenses, add a month. You can’t tell me that it is not much easier to breathe once you leave the city for a period.
We can continue but, this should be enough to prove that Saint John is not the place to be if you can at this time. But without people and much more new people there is just no way to get out of the rut.
In the view of what may be in line for Canada over the next year in the camps of the Fee-for-carriage debate between “Save Local” and “Stop the TV Tax.” Although this seems unfathomable in the current landscape, the near future will see broadcast, cable, and satellite a thing of the past to internet based distribution methods.
