A local service district (LSD) was a provincial administrative unit for the provision of local services in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. LSDs originally covered areas of the province that maintained some services but were not made municipalities when the province's former county municipalities were dissolved at the start of 1967; eventually all of rural New Brunswick was covered by the LSD system. They were defined in law by the Local Service Districts Regulation of the Municipalities Act. In 2017, the Municipalities Act was replaced by the Local Governance Act, which continued the Local Service Districts Regulation. LSDs were operated by provincial staff. Residents had the opportunity to form committees to serve in an advisory capacity to provincial staff. As management units collectively referred to as unincorporated areas, application of the LSD concept evolved to fit changes in communities over time, and they defined their communities to varying degrees. For example, sub-units of the LSD made it possible to have separate taxing authorities within an LSD where one area may have grown to have greater needs; a LSD covering a civil parish after the incorporation of a village or establishment of other LSDs may not have defined a community very well. Provincial government guidelines required capitalising the words local service district only if they follow the specific part of the name: e.g. Flatlands Local Service District but the local service district of Flatlands. A 2021 white paper recommended major reforms to New Brunswick's local governance system, including abolition of LSDs on 1 January 2023. Areas serviced by LSDs became parts of municipalities or, especially in sparsely populated areas, rural districts.
History The Royal Commission on Finance and Municipal Taxation was established in 1962 by Order-in-Council 62-185, tasked with performing a comprehensive review of the province's municipal structures and taxation. The Commission's report, often called the Byrne report for the Commission chair, Edward Byrne, released in 1964, recommended sweeping changes in the province's structure, including abolishing the incorporated county municipalities that governed rural areas of the province and replacing the authority for assessments, and tax collection in Provincial hands. Valuation of property was at first undertaken by the department of municipal affairs, and billing and collection later became the responsibility of the Services Corporation. The Municipalities Act of 1966 enacted local government structural changes recommended by the Byrne report. Local service districts were established on November 23 by Order-in-Council. Those rural areas that provided one or two services normally provided by municipalities, primarily fire protection, would be served by local service districts. 92 local service districts were established in 11 of the province's 15 counties. Gloucester (which today has more local service districts than any two other counties combined), Charlotte, Kings, and Northumberland Counties did not have any local service districts. Of the 92 LSDs, 86 were civil parishes; 81 provided only fire protection, while six added street lighting in at least part of the LSD, four added community services and recreational facilities, and one added garbage collection. The LSD system was extended to other unincorporated areas as needed, with the parish of Musquash in 1985 completing the process. Many LSDs were formed from parts of existing LSDs, a process that continued until 1994; three more have been formed since by combining existing LSDs.
Distribution As of 1 June 2019 there were 236 LSDs. An additional eighty LSDs had been dissolved, most of incorporated as, or absorbed by, municipalities. The number of concurrent LSDs peaked at 291 in 1991 and declined since 1995. There were 133 Parish LSDs (plus fifteen former parish LSDs), which range from entire parishes, such as Cardwell, to areas left over after large numbers of LSDs have been separated, such as Shippegan. The parishes of Gagetown, Grand Manan, Hampstead have never had parish LSDs; Huskisson, while unstated in Regulation 84-168, is part of LSD the parish of Harcourt. The remaining 103 LSDs (plus 62 former) varied in nature – two were school districts dating from the original creation of LSDs in 1966, one an island, one a pair of islands, several centralised communities like Elgin, most decentralised communities or groups of communities (which could approach the size of parishes), and two resulted from mergers in 1996 (Chaleur) and 1999 (Allardville) that included three (two parish) and two (one parish) LSDs respectively.
LSDs by county as of 1 June 2019
Other uses The number of LSDs is sometimes misstated, due to the existence of three units that can be confused with official LSDs: areas with increased or decreased services, Taxing Authorities, and Census Designated Places that are called Local Service Districts.
Special service areas (39 current plus 35 former) have been defined for different services than the parent LSD; with increasing regionalisation of services this has become limited to street lighting and/or community & recreation services. There does not seem to be an official term for such areas. Because the published descriptions of LSDs are only updated when voluntary services are added, many of these special service areas no longer serve any purpose.
Taxing Authorities (280 in 2019) usually match LSDs and special areas, but can also be subdivisions of LSDs that do not differ in services or groupings of special areas. Names can also vary from the appropriate LSD or special area, with "the parish of" typically dropped from the names of parish LSDs and "Parish" sometimes appended for clarity. The taxing authorities of Calhoun Road, Havelock Inside, and Saint-Grégoire cross LSD boundaries. Incorporated rural communities and the Regional Municipality of Tracadie continue to receive some LSD services from the provincial government. These former LSDs serve as TAs (21 in RCs, 21 in Tracadie) and are sometimes referred to as LSDs when discussing the provision of those services.
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