Atlantic mill rates top the 2026 OpenStats residential ranking

The 2026 OpenStats residential mill rate ranking currently has its deepest direct coverage in Nova Scotia. Within that set, Sydney leads at 19.36, followed by Truro (19.03), New Glasgow (18.40), Kentville (14.26), and Halifax (11.15). Rank 1 is the highest published residential mill rate in the covered set. OpenStats publishes the municipal rate; it does not estimate a household bill.

Sydney at 19.36 and Truro at 19.03 sit within 0.33 mills of each other at the top of the table. New Glasgow at 18.40 is about one mill below Truro. The step down to Kentville (14.26) is larger than the gap among the top three Cape Breton and northeastern peers. Halifax at 11.15 is the lowest in this published slice, still well above many inland western municipalities once broader national coverage expands.

What a mill rate measures

A mill rate expresses tax per $1,000 of assessed property value. At 19.36 mills, Sydney’s municipal rate implies $19.36 in municipal tax per $1,000 of assessment before provincial education levies, exemptions, and assessment base differences. Two cities with similar mill rates can produce different bills if assessed values or provincial components diverge. OpenStats ranks the published municipal residential rate so readers can compare policy choices, not individual invoices.

Coverage will widen as more municipalities publish machine-readable residential rates that pass the direct-tier gate. Until then, Atlantic readers should treat this ranking as a Nova Scotia-forward snapshot rather than a complete national ordering. Cities without a direct row may still appear on the property tax atlas with seed or regional labels; those rows are excluded from the headline mill-rate leaderboard.

Reading tiers and next pages

Direct-tier mill rates come from municipal budget documents or open-data feeds wired into the OpenStats pipeline. When a city republishes its rate mid-year, OpenStats updates the atlas row and the ranking on the next refresh cycle. Rank order among Sydney, Truro, and New Glasgow has been stable in recent editions because all three publish clear residential rates that pass the gate.

City Score includes mill-rate standing where direct coverage exists. Halifax’s lower mill rate relative to Sydney does not automatically mean a lower City Score; other owned lists (radon, permits) contribute to the composite. Hometown pages link to the property tax atlas slug for each city so readers can see rate history and tier labels in one place.

Primer: property tax mill rates guide. City pages: property tax atlas. For construction context in the same region, compare permit value rankings for Atlantic cities on the permits atlas where direct StatCan rows exist. Editorial standards and correction policy sit on editorial standards. When Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick municipalities publish direct residential rates that pass the gate, the ranking will widen beyond the current Nova Scotia cluster. Until then, compare Sydney at 19.36 mills to Halifax at 11.15 mills as a within-province spread of 8.21 mills on published municipal rates, before provincial education components enter a household bill.

Assessment growth can rise while mill rates stay flat, which means a homeowner pays more even when the ranked mill figure is unchanged year to year. OpenStats does not model assessment revaluation cycles. Readers researching affordability should pair mill-rate rankings with local assessment authority publications. The property tax atlas stores the rate OpenStats verified, the source URL when available, and the tier label on every slug page. Truro at 19.03 mills and New Glasgow at 18.40 mills remain within two mills of Sydney at the top of the current table. Kentville at 14.26 mills sits between the northeastern cluster and Halifax, which helps readers see a gradient across Nova Scotia direct rows rather than a single provincial average. Halifax at 11.15 mills remains the lowest published direct row in the current slice, which matters when Cape Breton readers compare municipal policy choices across the province. Property tax coverage on OpenStats will expand city by city as budgets publish open residential rates; the ranking order among direct Nova Scotia rows can shift when a municipality updates its published rate.