Council Size

[Dmajackson]

The 2008 election is coming up and a least one of the candidates has mentioned cutting down the council size to 12 or 13 members. I can't make a poll for this because of the high number of districts so instead please simply post which districts you would like merged. I also welcome any suggestions on district boundary changes. Here's a list of all 23 districts:

1 -Eastern Shore - Musquodoboit Valley
2 -Waverly - Fall River - Beaver Bank
3 -Preston - Lawerencetown - Chezzetcook
4 -Cole Harbour
5 -Dartmouth Centre
6 -East Dartmouth - The Lakes
7 -Portland - East Woodlawn
8 -Woodside - Eastern Passage
9 -Albro Lake - Harbourview
10-Clayton Park West
11-Halifax North End
12-Halifax Downtown
13-Northwest Arm - South End
14-Connaught - Quinpool
15-Fairveiw - Clayton Park
16-Rockingham - Wentworth
17-Purcell's Cove - Armdale
18-Spryfield - Herring Cove
19-Middle & Upper Sackville - Lucasville
20-Lower Sackville
21-Bedford
22-Timberlea - Prospect
23-Hammonds Plains - St Margarets

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19/20 One merge I'm positive should happen is a merge of the Sackvilles. There's no reason for Sackville to be split into two districts.
18/22/23 These three are all on the south shore and some form of merge should occur between them. Especially between 18 and 22.
10/15 Both are Clayton Park/Fairview so I think logically these should be merged to allow co-operation between the two easier.

That's all I can think of right now but I'm sure other forumers can think of more and better merges.

[someone123]

I'd suggest something like:

Halifax South End (+downtown)
Halifax North End
Spryfield-Fairview-Herring Cove
Clayton Park
Bedford-Rockingham
Sackville
Dartmouth North
Dartmouth South
Cole Harbour
Western Exurban
Eastern Exurban

[Dmajackson]

I would give downtown its own district but other than that i like your list.

[JONOJOE]

I think councilors should be allocated based on registered (or estimated) voters per district, so my list would look something like this:

Halifax Peninsula
halifax Mainland (spryfield, herring cove, fairview, clayton park)
Bedford/rockingham/Sackville
Dartmouth North
Dartmouth south
and maybe sperated western exurban/eastern exurban

bottom line .. 23 councilors for less then 500,000 people is a joke, halifax can not grow, nor can it make any progressive/productive decisions while there are to many heads in the pot..

[reddog794]

16 councilors would be a good number, two per district. DT, Pen, Main, South Basin, North Basin, West Dart, East Dart, Frmr County

[spaustin]

Maybe I'm too much of a political scientist but I think removing representation is not the answer. It's probably the simplest solution to the somewhat messy business of running or not running HRM as the case may be, but I don't think it's ideal. As the size of a riding increases, politicians become more remote, campaign funding becomes more important and it becomes more difficult to successfully challenge incumbents. The problem with municipal governments, generally, in Canada is that there are as many policies as there are councillors, there is usually a weak mayor and the area covered by most large Canadian cities is diverse. It makes it very difficult to get anything accomplished. Rather than remove representatives, I think it would be better to consider other options such as

1. Create some new at large seats so that there are some councillors who have to take a city-wide view.
2. Enhance the power of the mayor.
3. Form municipal political parties so that there are clearer platforms and people that can be held accountable (pretty hard to pin-down who is to blame for anything right now).
4. Deamalgamate so that the different areas of the municipality can do their own thing, but retain some form of elected regional government to handle things that need a city-wide perspective like the library system, public transit etc

I'm sure there are other things that could be done, these are just the ones that come to mind after spending 7 years in political science. Dumping representatives, I think, is the easy knee-jerk solution, but, like many easy solutions, its not actually the best way to handle a complicated problem.

[GUB]

Anyone see the council broadcast last week when Sloane flipped out like a 10 year old?
Man, oh man she's an embarrassment.
I know I'm off topic, but I think it's frightening she was elected at all.

[JONOJOE]

Maybe I'm too much of a political scientist but I think removing representation is not the answer. It's probably the simplest solution to the somewhat messy business of running or not running HRM as the case may be, but I don't think it's ideal. As the size of a riding increases, politicians become more remote, campaign funding becomes more important and it becomes more difficult to successfully challenge incumbents. The problem with municipal governments, generally, in Canada is that there are as many policies as there are councillors, there is usually a weak mayor and the area covered by most large Canadian cities is diverse. It makes it very difficult to get anything accomplished. Rather than remove representatives, I think it would be better to consider other options such as

1. Create some new at large seats so that there are some councillors who have to take a city-wide view.
2. Enhance the power of the mayor.
3. Form municipal political parties so that there are clearer platforms and people that can be held accountable (pretty hard to pin-down who is to blame for anything right now).
4. Deamalgamate so that the different areas of the municipality can do their own thing, but retain some form of elected regional government to handle things that need a city-wide perspective like the library system, public transit etc

I'm sure there are other things that could be done, these are just the ones that come to mind after spending 7 years in political science. Dumping representatives, I think, is the easy knee-jerk solution, but, like many easy solutions, its not actually the best way to handle a complicated problem.

i'm not a political scientist, but is there a way (in theory) to distribute power to councilors based on economic generations per district .. the problem in HRM is the downtown councilor who's district brings in 240 million $$ a year has the same say as the spryfield councilor who brings in 30 million.. to me that seems to be the biggest problem.. the urban core, continuously is subsidizing it's own demise for the money goes from the core, to pay for services or facilities in low population/tax generating areas and as a result there is less money to rehabilitate the areas (such as downtown) where the major funds are coming from

[reddog794]

spaustin, I know this sounds naive, but I always thought all council members were at-large. Jonojoe, I have to say I like your idea as much as mine, but my argument to it, is that what of areas around DC, or the Ports? does North Dartmouth get as big a say as DT, or South-end for that matter? Just questions that came to mind.

[JONOJOE]

spaustin, I know this sounds naive, but I always thought all council members were at-large. Jonojoe, I have to say I like your idea as much as mine, but my argument to it, is that what of areas around DC, or the Ports? does North Dartmouth get as big a say as DT, or South-end for that matter? Just questions that came to mind.

I don't quite think i understand your question... everybody will have equal say (1 councilor 1 vote) but maybe establishing something so that 70% of taxes collected in each district stays in that district, and only 30% gets put in the municipal pot to fund under populated/economically deprived areas..

this would give the downtown the majority of the money collected from the downtown to put in it's own infrastructure (stadium, public rink, better roads, more police patrol etc) as opposed to just going into the municipal bank account to be spent by council building a new highways from middle of nowhere to other side of smallville

[spryscraper]

Don Mills, in the Chronicle Herald:
United we fall, divided we stand

By DON MILLS
Wed. Nov 5 - 8:24 AM
Twelve years into amalgamation in the Halifax Regional Munici­pality, are we better or worse off ? More important, what will really change under the new council?

Let’s review some achieve­ments of the HRM since amalga­mation of the former Town of Bedford, City of Halifax, City of Dartmouth and County of Hali­fax. Since 1996, we have wit­nessed:

• the largest increase in property taxes in the history of each of the four previous municipal units;

• uncontrolled urban sprawl that has contributed to significant growth in municipal expendi­tures to pay for infrastructure in outlying areas, essentially subsi­dizing such development;

• a decrease in the population of those living on the peninsula and an increase in the number of res­idents travelling into the urban core, creating greater traffic con­gestion;

• stalled commercial develop­ment in the downtown core, re­sulting in the loss of tens of mil­lions of dollars in tax revenue;

• the loss of identity associated with belonging to a regional mu­nicipality with an acronym as its name;

• a citizens’ revolt in the old Town of Bedford as a result of a deficiency in infrastructure spending in that community;

• a council largely divided along rural and urban lines that is sim­ply too big and cumbersome to be able to make decisions, and that spends a disproportionate amount of time on the wrong is­sues;

• a mayor with little or no sense of vision for the future, except perhaps a fast ferry to Bedford and a clean harbour;

• procrastination on almost ev­ery issue, tax reform and crime to name but two, and slow deci­sion- making otherwise (five years to develop an economic plan for the municipality and nearing three years to get HRM by Design approval, scheduled now for some time in 2009); and
• a piecemeal strategy regarding public transportation.

As someone who supported the amalgamation of the urban mu­nicipalities while chair of the board of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, I believe the provin­cial Liberal government at the time made a late, politically ex­pedient decision to include the County of Halifax in the amalga­mation to address its significant fiscal problems at the time. It cer­tainly wasn’t done for good gov­ernance reasons. HRM covers a geographic area the size of Prince Edward Island, with more than 100 mostly small communities. It is clear from the performance of council that the ability to appropriately address the very different needs and con­cerns of urban and rural resi­dents has been largely compro­mised for both these constituen­cies. Clearly, issues such as traf­fic congestion, public transit, crime and downtown develop­ment are more important to ur­ban residents than rural resi­dents; while essential services such as garbage collection, fire protection and roads are more important to rural residents than their urban counterparts.

Our research at Corporate Re­search Associates has consis­tently demonstrated the desire by the majority of residents to separate HRM into two munici­pal units, a county for rural resi­dents and a city for urban resi­dents. This would have the bene­fit of reducing the size of council for each unit to a more appropri­ate size (perhaps 12 to 15 council­lors each) to address the needs of these very different constituen­cies.

Indeed, residents support such a division by a two-to-one margin (61 per cent support versus 30 per cent oppose), with those living in the rural areas of HRM the most in favour of such a split (66 per cent). By the way, the question asked was as follows: Do you sup­port or oppose dividing HRM in­to two municipal units, one for rural residents called the County of Halifax and one for urban resi­dents called the City of Halifax?

Furthermore, the majority of residents across HRM believe the new City of Halifax should in­clude the former Town of Bed­ford, City of Dartmouth and City of Halifax.

The mayor has publicly stated the costs of such a division would be $42 million. I challenge the mayor to back up that statement with facts, because, while there would clearly be some costs in­curred, both municipal units would be able to continue to use the current municipal services on a cost-shared basis without necessarily adding to the cost of service delivery. The real ques­tion to be asked is: What is the continuing cost to our communi­ty of the current dysfunctional governance structure? The loss of tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue from stalled com­mercial development alone would significantly alleviate the rising costs to residential prop­erty owners.

Residents did not get a voice in the amalgamation process; I challenge the provincial govern­ment to let residents decide on their preferred governance structure through a plebiscite.

Don Mills is president & CEO, Corpo­rate Research Associates Inc.

[Spitfire75]

Correlation does not imply causation. Who's to say those things wouldn't have happened if we didn't amalgamate?

[someone123]

i'm not a political scientist, but is there a way (in theory) to distribute power to councilors based on economic generations per district .. the problem in HRM is the downtown councilor who's district brings in 240 million $$ a year has the same say as the spryfield councilor who brings in 30 million.. to me that seems to be the biggest problem.. the urban core, continuously is subsidizing it's own demise for the money goes from the core, to pay for services or facilities in low population/tax generating areas and as a result there is less money to rehabilitate the areas (such as downtown) where the major funds are coming from

The sad thing is that very few people believe this. Everybody around the HRM thinks that they are hard done by and pay too much in taxes while not receiving enough in services. A big reason for this is that services cost dramatically more to provide in low density areas like Hammonds Plains and people don't realise or don't want to accept it.

Has the population of the peninsula actually fallen since 1996? That seems like a very questionable claim. I would expect there to be more people and more businesses since vacancies are lower now. The universities are also larger and there are more students (who probably are not fully counted).

As for the sprawl, exurban development began in the 1980s and early 1990s before amalgamation. The HRM could be doing better but back then we had fiascos like Bayers Lake.

[Dmajackson]

Halifax, CBRM have too many councillors, politicians say

By DAVENE JEFFREY Staff Reporter
Tue. Jun 16 - 4:46 AM

Halifax’s deputy mayor says regional council should be smaller and election boundaries streamlined.

David Hendsbee said he will approach the municipal affairs minister in the new provincial government about reviewing electoral boundaries in Halifax Regional Municipality as soon as premier-designate Darrell Dexter names his cabinet.

"I personally believe that we should have harmonized (municipal and provincial boundaries)," Mr. Hendsbee said.

"We should reconfigure all the provincial seats within the HRM territory. If there are 16 or 17 MLAs, we should mirror the same boundaries municipally. Same voters list, same territories, no confusion for the voters. I’ve been an advocate for this for years."

The municipality has to do a boundary review next year, and Mr. Hendsbee said he will ask the province to take a look at its electoral boundaries at the same time.

"Why don’t we do this as a tandem exercise?" he said.

Mr. Dexter, who will be sworn in as premier on Friday, has promised to run the province with just a dozen people in cabinet, one-third fewer than the 18 people in Rodney MacDonald’s cabinet.

Mr. Hendsbee also wants the Dexter government to freeze MLAs’ salaries until the budget is balanced again. The deputy mayor had his pay frozen when he was an MLA in John Hamm’s Conservative government.

"Any raises we got at that time, we gave to charity," Mr. Hendsbee said.

Meanwhile, Mayor John Morgan of Cape Breton Regional Municipality hopes the new provincial government will amend the Municipal Government Act, which he says encourages larger councils.

Under the act, "the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board doesn’t have the ability to order a plebiscite," he said.

Two years ago, Mr. Morgan, acting on behalf of a citizens group, proposed that Cape Breton regional council be cut in half to eight members from 16.

The review board refused to change the composition of council, saying it hadn’t been given good enough information about what the municipality’s 104,000 residents wanted. The board ordered the municipality to do a proper study on reducing the size of council and report back by 2010.

"So we’re back to Square 1," Mr. Morgan said.

"We had no mechanism to go to the citizens to ask them what they thought on this issue."

The current system of holding city hall meetings doesn’t give an accurate reading of public opinion, Mr. Morgan said.

( djeffrey@herald.ca )