Getting ready for the return of budget season

Every tenth one of these City Hall Insider Newsletters is sent out to all Coast Daily subscribers—not just the paying Insider members—and normally this intro is a hard sales pitch encouraging you to become an Insider if you haven’t already, so you can reap the benefits of this newsletter. What benefits, you ask? Well, this week, there was a PD day on Thursday for parent-teacher conferences in the HRCE. This meant no school on a day when there were three meetings of council. How many minutes of committee meetings can a reporter get away with covering while parenting a six-year-old? In my case about 45 minutes, as it turns out.

On top of that, Wednesday’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting was spicy, but in a very dull and indirect way. Trying to explain the implications of this meeting took me a few rough drafts to get a story together for The Coast website, so I couldn’t focus on the initial police budgets that were also presented at that meeting. This means in practice that it’s Friday, and I still need to watch and write about a half dozen committee meetings for this newsletter, and don’t have any time to also write about them for The Coast site. This, in turn, means that the only place some of last week’s committee meetings will be covered is in this newsletter. And if this were 9 out of 10 weeks, you’d have never known about them.

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But I’m way behind schedule, so let’s dig in. 

TL;DR

Fillmore handed narrow defeat

BOPC votes to make themselves useless

Get excited, budget season starts on Tuesday

What happened last week

Monday, December 2

The Investment Policy Advisory Committee was cancelled. 

The Grants Committee met and decided to amend the Community Grants Program by making a few administrative changes to the eight grant categories. The most headline-y one is removing affordable housing as something that is eligible for a municipal grant. Staff are recommending this course of action because other governments are now stepping up, so the city is beefing up its assistance in things it has more power over (i.e. property tax relief) and wants to consolidate municipal funding into one predictable channel and remove the ad hoc temporary funding of the grants program. But there’s also stuff about consolidating heritage incentives, a recognition that inclusion without accessibility isn’t all that inclusion-y, and beefing up energy efficiency and food security grants. They also approved some expanded tax relief. Both of these will need council’s approval, so you’ll read about these two motions again later on in this newsletter. The Grants Committee also set their meeting schedule. 

Tuesday, December 3: Council day!

Huge day in the world of municipal politics in Halifax as our new mayor, Andy Fillmore, made his first big play in the major leagues (municipal government) after successfully making the step up from riding the back bench in the minors (federal government) during the 2024 draft (municipal election). Less successful was his first-ever motion at council: to de-designate encampments, which lost in a vote of 8-7. You can read my full breakdown below, and for those curious, some councillors like Laura White have explained their (seemingly) out-of-character votes. In her newsletter, White says that her decision was based on three things: 1) confidence in the CAO (valid, but I got a different read from the CAO), 2) she thinks we should use parking lots instead of parks (smart and makes sense) and 3) having a list of potential encampment sites on record gives the CAO the power to open encampments without council’s approval. During the debate the CAO said that even though she had that power, she was uncomfortable using it without coming to council first. So, the CAO having the power to open encampments without council’s approval is an issue if you don’t trust the CAO to do what she says she will. Full report below:

Wednesday, December 4

The Board of Police Commissioners met and could have used some of councillor White’s healthy skepticism of people in positions of power in the HRM. At this meeting, after two years, the Board finally directed the police to start reviewing cases of sexual assault that do not make it to trial to try and figure out why. The board passed the motion and with that vote the board handed off responsibility for police oversight over to the HRP. Click here for my full report. 

The police forces also presented the first draft of their budgets. The Halifax Regional Police got slapped around a bit by commissioners Gavin Giles and Yemi Akindoju, who said that the HRP is asking for too much stuff. The police are expecting to need 10 new staff and 600-odd cameras and software licenses to implement body-worn cameras, and they’re also asking for an additional seven staff members. 

For their part, the RCMP gave “an introduction to the discussion” about their budget ask for 14 new officers: They’re asking for one traffic cop for Fall River, one community cop for Sheet Harbour, and proposing to set up satellite offices in both Beechville and Fall River, each of which will take six cops, to round out the 14. In the presentation, the RCMP said that their main role is to prevent crime, but that’s not quite true—their job is to investigate and then arrest people who commit crimes. If their enforcement of the law of the land acts as a deterrent, that’s a bonus, not the main bullet point in the RCMP’s job description. 

The Active Transportation Standing Committee met and received an update on the Grahams Grove Active Transportation Function Plan. This is the planning process by which the city hopes to improve biking or walking across the Circumferential Highway. In response to the Shape Your City survey about the Grahams Grove plan, I provided the following feedback to the city: “I also understand (better than most) why the city is reticent to build protected bike infrastructure due to cost, public popularity, level of service impacts, and the assessed risk of not building to established standards. But at the same time, if the paint were genuinely safe infrastructure, cars wouldn't need airbags as the lines on our roads would prevent most, if not all, collisions.“

I’m happy to report that this feedback (and I assume other feedback like it) was listened to, as during the presentation, painted bike lanes are not in the plan, with the notable exception of Harris Road, which absolutely needs protected bike lanes if it’s getting a bike connection over the Circ. Right now Harris Road is slated to get sharrows, and a study in 2016 out of the University of Colorado found that sharrows are more dangerous than no infrastructure at all. When there are no sharrows, people don’t ride on the road; when there are sharrows people are encouraged to ride on those roads, which leads to more conflict with drivers and, therefore, more injuries. So that part’s not great.  

But otherwise city planners showed designs that suggested the city's engineers are starting to realize paint does not have magical protective properties. Peter Zimmer, Halifax Cycling Coalition's rep on the committee, pointed out that a few years ago the city passed the Integrated Mobility Plan, which says pedestrians come first. But as staff explained their compromises, Zimmer pointed out that the city’s priorities are car first, budget second, then maybe pedestrians. Milena Khazanavicius, the committee rep for those with degraded or no sight, chimed in to say that using mixed-use pathways to make sure drivers aren’t too inconvenienced by road diets puts her constituency at risk of getting hurt. And she’s tired of hearing that the cost of infrastructure is preventing the city from designing with her safety in mind.

This committee also set its meeting schedule and received an update from Zimmer about the seasonal maintenance of bike lanes, trails, sidewalks and crosswalks that wasn’t really an update. He just said that the city has an AAA bike network, which implies it’s a 24/7/365 network, but it’s only really maintained during the summer. There’s no snow clearing, there’s no leaf clearing, so he wants to bring public works in front of this committee to grill them on what AAA means to them. City staff told Zimmer that there are new standards for clearing bike lanes so things are better now and shared the new standards. Committee member Douglas Wetmore from More than Busses said that the new standards aren’t helping and cited a 311 service request he submitted about the South Park Street bike lanes. He made the request in November, the ticket is now closed and leaves are still in the bike lane. City staffer David MacIssac came to Public Work’s defense. saying that some of the city’s bike lanes are hard to clear due to how they were designed. He explained that due to the tradeoffs, like not being willing to take space away from cars, the bike lanes are a hot mess to maintain. Gee David, do you know who designed those bike lanes? Do you think they should do better designs or adhere to the HRM’s strategic plans when considering tradeoffs? Maybe we can try that instead of the current strategy of city staff throwing up their hands and plaintively saying there’s nothing they can do?   

Thursday, December 5

The Appeals Standing Committee met to elect chairs from among the councillors on the committee. Becky Kent is chair, Janet Steele is vice-chair, and Nancy Hartling was nominated to the Executive Standing Committee. They also set their meeting schedule. 

The Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee met, and from their member councillors they nominated Tony Mancini as chair, and Cathy Deagle Gammon as vice chair. Steele is heading to the Halifax Regional Water Commission, Hartling’s heading to the Nova Scotia Solid Waste Resource Management Committee (with Mancini as her alternate) and White was given the nod to join the Executive Standing Committee. They also set their meeting schedule. 

The Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee met in Halifax Hall, which means this meeting was not televised so I couldn’t watch it to see how the agenda matched up to what actually happened. And the minutes were not published in time for this newsletter’s deadline. If any corrections are necessary, they will be flagged in a future newsletter. Until then we’re going to assume they did in fact meet, and they did in fact discuss affordable housing through a Gender Based Analysis+ lens. If they requested the city write a letter to the province asking for the municipal conflict of interest act’s language to be changed to be gender neutral, we’ll see that come to Executive Committee at some point.

Remember in the ancient days of last week’s newsletter when I was all like “advisory committees are places where the city sends its best and brightest to spin their wheels, accomplishing nothing?” Well, the Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee spent the better part of last year having extremely weedy conversations about the power legislated to their committee. Throughout that discussion, they realized they were empowered and instructed to do things, like “receive and review municipal policies, priorities and decisions using a gender lens, for items directed to the Committee by Council or a Standing Committee of Council, or on its own initiative with direction from the Executive Standing Committee, and to make recommendations.” And ditto for business units. So they’re quite likely writing a letter to ask that council and the CAO start sending the committee some policies, priorities and decisions to review so “that the Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee play an active role in the policy development and review process at Halifax Regional Municipality as outlined in the Committee’s Terms of Reference.” Kudos to the committee for taking back their legislated power. Shame on the city for not being proactive about good governance. We are assuming the advisory committee is so far successful in taking back their power, so it too will be debated at that Executive Committee meeting. 

The Harbour East Marine Drive was supposed to meet and do some stuff, but this meeting was rescheduled. 

What’s happening this week

Monday, December 9

The Accessibility Advisory Committee has been cancelled. 

The Regional Centre Community Council will meet. They’re going to have a public hearing and then likely vote to update land-use bylaws to allow the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre to proceed. They will also approve their meeting schedule. 

The North West Community Council will meet and discuss their 2024 annual report. It’s a list of everything they’ve done over the past year. There will also be two public hearings. The first is about a development on Beaver Bank Road: They want to add seven additional units to their development, but doing so requires changing bylaws and a public hearing. The second hearing is about a development agreement for the corner of Majesty Court and Hammonds Plains Road. City staff have approved the development, but the applicants don’t want to build it until traffic lights are built, but traffic lights aren’t something the developers can do, nor is it something the city is planning on doing. Since the applicants don’t want to build without traffic lights, and the development agreement has already been approved, in order to get out of the agreement the developers need the site plan to be rejected. In order to get the plan rejected they need to appeal staff’s decision, which they did, which requires a public hearing, where staff recommended the appeal be approved, and the site plan rejected. There really isn't a better way to do this? 

Also on the docket is first reading for development agreement changes for 592 Bedford Highway. They want to change their plan and convert an interior space into four units for their development. This needs approval because the city has laws mandating new developments to have interior amenity space and that units have balconies. 

Tuesday, December 10: Budget season starts and council meets!

First up is budget season, which will start with a presentation from the Poet Laureate, then there will be public participation and then we’ll have the first game of budget season: Capital Advance Tender Requests. This year the city’s capital budget is expected to be $104,826,000 and the highlights are $3 million on Active Transit, $600,000 on bus stop improvements, $5.4 million for Regional Centre AAA bikeways and $1 million for sidewalks. Lowlights include $1.4 million road works, $5.6 million on road repairs, $4.7 million for traffic lights and a whopping $52 million—HALF OF THE ADVANCE TENDERS BUDGET—on road recapitalization. Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your priorities. 

Once that debate is over (it will likely last until the afternoon) councillors will change their hats and start a meeting of council. First they’ll review all the staff reports on the books and decide which to keep and which to ditch. 

Councillor Patty Cuttell wanted to ask for an update on the Moving Forward Together Plan at a previous meeting, but this was deferred, so she’ll do that at this meeting instead. 

At 6pm council will have a public hearing and likely approve the demolition of the church at 1259 South Park Street as long as the stonework is kept and signs explain why this building was significant. 

Council is going to consider expanding the boundaries of the Land Titles Clarification Area around North Preston, East Preston, Cherry Brook and Lake Loon. 

Council is likely going to approve naming some private roads and renaming some public ones. 

Council will likely change the tax sale policies; in the future the city will not advertise tax sales in the newspaper and just do it on the Halifax.ca website instead. This will save the city about $21,000 a year. 

A development on 10 Kirk Road was held up at community council because councillor Cuttell wanted more information about a footpath on the property. This motion will direct staff to write a staff report about “the tow path which crosses the property located at 10 Kirk Road.”

Last Monday the Grants Committee voted to provide more property tax relief for non-profit and registered Canadian charities. This move is expected to cost the city less than $350,000 in lost revenue, and is expected to be approved by council at this meeting. 

Also out of Grants Committee, the city is changing how it funds things in this city and is moving away from grants toward more stable, less cumbersome funding models. Since good governance is popular, it passed through the Grants Committee and is also expected to pass at council.  

Wednesday, December 11

The Audit and Finance Standing Committee will meet and get an update on the city’s second quarter financial statements. The city ran a deficit of $319,100 in the second quarter. Transit and public works need a bunch of modems, they’re in our smart traffic lights, but they’re slowly starting to fail and need to be replaced. It’s 466 modems for $769,000, and it’s easiest to replace them all at once, which would require moving money around, which in turn needs approval from council so here we are. They’re also going to approve their 2025 meeting schedule.   

The Transportation Standing Committee will also meet, and they will appoint people to the Canadian Urban Transit Association and the Executive Standing Committee. Then they’ll approve their meeting schedule. 

The Heritage Advisory Committee will discuss making 6 First Avenue a heritage property and then approve their new meeting schedule.  

The Harbour East-Marine Drive Community Council will meet and get their annual report. They’re also going to get a presentation about the non-market housing inventory in the HRM for Districts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. 204 Conrod Road will probably get a take-out restaurant, after a public hearing that will be scheduled if this passes as expected at this meeting. As we all know the best way to foster small businesses to create complete communities is by forcing start up companies with limited resources to navigate cumbersome administrative process, so I'm happy to see the HRM using it here. They’ll also nominate one person to go to the Audit and Finance Standing Committee, and approve their meeting schedule. 

The Western Advisory Committee meeting was cancelled. 

Thursday December 12

The Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee will meet and they’ll get a presentation from the University of King’s College Southeast Corner Project. The city is thinking about a new Park Lighting Strategy.

People are having way too much fun playing pickleball at Castle Hill and are making a lot of noise. Instead of letting people make noise when they have fun, the city is removing the pickleball courts and hopes to build less convenient ones at the Mainland Common in the 2025/26 capital budget. This committee will also appoint someone to the Executive Standing Committee and set their meeting schedule. 

The Design Review Committee, Regional Watersheds Advisory Board, Youth Advisory Committee, the African Decent Advisory Committee and Friday’s Special Events Advisory Committee have all been cancelled. 

Gov’t Tendies

This section normally lists things the city wants to buy, but it’s for paid subscribers only. Just kidding, I ran out of time this week to update it with the latest tenders. But for an example of what’s normally in this section, here’s some of what the city wanted to buy as of Nov 22, 2024. The municipal government tenders website, which includes information on how to sell the city what it’s looking for, can be found right here.

The city is looking for someone to do some HR consulting. 

The city is looking for some food vendors to apply for multi-year licenses. 

The HRM needs someone to inspect, maintain and repair automatic gates. 

The city needs someone to assess public works facility needs. 

Halifax is looking for some help in coming up with an immigration master plan. 

The city is looking for a roofer. 

The city’s also looking for a siding and gutter guy.

And Fire Station #19 needs some structural repairs. 

—Matt

Now that we’re at the end, I’ve got to ask:

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