Property assessment freeze in 2026 may force 'difficult decisions,' minister admits 

The New Brunswick government says it hopes municipalities will be able to absorb a broad property assessment freeze in 2026 without raising tax rates on property owners. 

But if municipal budget figures from this year are a guide, that may be a tall order.

At a news conference Wednesday, Aaron Kennedy, the minister responsible for Service New Brunswick, said he hopes municipalities will be able to scrape by in 2026 on revenue assessment increases they can generate outside the freeze and by making "difficult decisions" about how they spend money in their communities.

"I appreciate their frustration with the announcement, but I think when you take into consideration that sales and new construction and major renovations is excluded from the freeze there are many municipalities that won't have a freeze in their revenues," Kennedy said.

WATCH | 'You, as government, need to do something,' province told by homeowners: 

Will N.B.'s property assessment freeze actually help lower tax bills?

1 day ago

Duration 1:25

New Brunswick Local Government Minister Aaron Kennedy says homeowners angry with their rising property tax bills persuaded the province to freeze property assessments in 2026. But a similar freeze in 2018 was partially nullified when 41 municipalities raised their property tax rates in response.

In Saint John, Mayor Donna Reardon said the city has a number of financial obligations that are already fixed for next year, including negotiated wage increases for unionized employees, that cannot easily be managed in the absence of revenue growth.

"We have four unions we have contracts with and their wages won't be frozen," Reardon said. 

"It's difficult."

Had a similar freeze been imposed in the current year, Saint John budget documents suggest the city would have had significant problems making ends meet.

Saint John did experience about $2 million in increased tax revenue this year from new construction, but that is well short of what would have been needed to finance a $6.8 million increase — or 3½ per cent — in municipal expenditures and a $2.6 million reduction in the city's tax rate in the 2025 budget.

Some combination of higher tax rates and service cuts adding up to $7 million or more would have been needed to make that budget balance under a freeze this year.

Kennedy said a $63 million increase in funding to local governments from the province announced in this year's budget should also help soften the blow of the assessment freeze, although he said decisions on how much of those increases each municipality will receive will be made at a later date.

In 2018, during New Brunswick's last assessment freeze, 41 New Brunswick communities did eventually raise tax rates to finance their budgets that year.