How not to end up up with the mayor we least want
Perhaps Halifax should adopt a kinder, gentler version of the American cage match, survival-of-the-sleaziest primary system to winnow our choices for mayor. Or maybe we need to consider some variation of the NDP’s upcoming advance preferential leadership balloting system to determine who we most—and least—want as next super mayor of our supercity.
Consider. Four candidates have already declared, and at least four others are teetering on the edge. The election doesn’t take place until October.
David Boyd—cab driver, perennial political also-ran—was first out of the blocks, vowing to make Halifax “the Vegas of the east” with strip clubs and casinos. In 2008, he received 1,791 votes for mayor.
Tom Martin—celebrated former cop, manager of Sheila Fougere’s 2008 mayoralty campaign—blames “the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency, the lack of consultation with councillors and the lack of public consultation” at city hall on a mayor “without the ability to lead.”
Fred Connors—hairstylist, entrepreneur, urban chicken farmer—threw his hat in the ring earlier this month, saying he wanted to get “some real change happening in Halifax.”
Matthew Wornona—Toronto native, Dalhousie student—is running because he disagrees with Mayor Peter Kelly’s handling of the eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia protestors.
Meanwhile, restaurateur Lil MacPherson said in December she was “considering it for real,” but hasn’t formally announced. Neither has environmentalist, current MLA and former city councillor Howard Epstein, who would be a formidable candidate.
The race’s certain-to-be front-runners—former MP Mike Savage and current mayor Kelly—haven’t officially declared, but both have campaign teams and money in place.
So many candidates—all but Peter Kelly running against Peter Kelly.
Under our current first-past-the-post system, the unintended consequence of so many wannabes may be four more leaderless, wished-we-hadn’t years.
While we can’t change the system before October’s election, we can ask our preferred alternatives-to-he-who-should-not-be-re-elected to give it their best shot between now and official nomination day—Sept. 11, 2012—and then realistically reassess their chances for success.
Not to forget the chance that they may be responsible for four more years of…
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
City council stumbles… again, always
The lesson from last week’s reversal of council’s decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra school to a private developer? Even when our councillors finally, belatedly get it right, they bungle the process so badly everyone walks away more than slightly soiled and embarrassed by the whole exercise.
In December, over angry objections of north-end residents—who already believed they were being squeezed out of their own community by urban redevelopment and gentrification—council voted to peddle a local community school site to a private developer.
The problem—as quickly became apparent and should have been clear before the vote—was that council hadn’t followed city policy for disposing of surplus property. They were supposed to consult the community first.
Not that it mattered. City staff had stacked the evaluation process to make it virtually impossible for proposals from non-profit community groups to compete with those from private developers.
There were rallies. Hundreds protested. There was a petition. Close to a thousand people signed.
Last week, the issue made its way back to council. After four-and-a-half hours of “other business”—before a packed gallery present only for the school issue—councillors finally got around to debating a motion to rescind.
Coun. Jennifer Watts had barely moved her motion when city manager Richard Butts advised councillors to go into secret session to talk the motion over with city legal staff. Another secret meeting to discuss public business? Where was this city manager when Occupy Nova Scotia protestors got turfed? Oh, right. He was home in Toronto.
Council voted down the secret meeting, then voted down a motion to adjourn, then met in secret anyway, then—it’s now closing in on one in the morning—finally voted 17-5 to rescind their original decision. And they asked city staff, who, of course, had devised the flawed process in the first place, to report back on whether the process had been correctly followed.
As usual, nothing is settled.
Once again, Council has managed to alienate the community, the developers who submitted bids in good faith and average citizens who expect better.
Let’s hope there’s a lesson in that too.
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
Progress? Who’s whining now?
On Wednesday, local radio personality Bobby Mac launched a new Facebook group “for those of us who are tired of those whining people who don't want any progress in this great city of Halifax.” Its name? SCREW THE VIEW!!
By Saturday morning, STV had 163 members.
“We are tired of the groups that stop progress in this great city of Halifax,” he explained. “We want new buildings. No one goes up Citadel hill for the view. They go for the fort, and for sex at night.”
Acknowledging Bobby Mac probably knows more about sex on Citadel Hill than I do, and even accepting his dubious proposition no one goes there for the view, let’s analyze his most serious argument: whining, save-the-view-of-the-harbour-flotables crazies are preventing “progress”—by which I assume he means a forest of high rise office towers on the slopes of the Citadel.
Really?
Last year, Dalhousie’s Planning and Design Centre released a map showing 23 major downtown development projects, all of them approved, but almost none built or under construction. Who’s to blame for that? Heritage groups? Developers? Or perhaps the economy, stupid?
The convention centre? Despite the whinging from the all-things-ancient lovers, the city and province eagerly approved the proposed project and shoveled buckets of our cash in its direction. The first real delay came because Ottawa took its time to say yes.
By the time it did, the economy had gone to hell in a handcart. The developer is still scrambling to find financing and tenants to make the project viable.
Speaking of which, the whiners—who also raised Economics 101 questions about the convention centre—appear to have been right about that.
Consider this from the Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal, hardly a preserve of loony preservationists. There’s “a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms,” the paper notes. “How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.”
Uh… Perhaps Bobby Mac’s next Facebook group will be to whinge about how all our tax dollars are being wasted on a white elephant.
Now that would be progress.
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
Not “Africville all over again”… not yet
Rev. Rhonda Britten may have been guilty of hyperbole when she compared last week’s city council decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra School to a local developer to “the rape... of a community… Africville all over again!”
But she is not entirely canary-in-the-coal-mine wrong.
In 2009, Halifax Regional School Board—over the ongoing objections of the north-end community—decided to shutter St.Pat’s-Alexandra after the 2010-11 school year.
That suddenly freed up a tantalizing 3.85-acre chunk of valuable, edge-of-downtown real estate in a rapidly gentrifying poor neighbourhood.
Last summer, the city issued a call for proposals. Six groups—three for-profit and three non-profit—responded. After evaluating them, staff last week recommended a private developer’s proposal to tear down the school and replace it with a mixed residential/affordable housing/community space development.
But Britten, who is the well-connected pastor of Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, says she didn’t even learn about the call for proposals until 12 days before the deadline.
That’s interesting. Municipal policies call for residents to be consulted before the city invites proposals if surplus schools might have community uses.
Britten’s group did quickly manage to cobble together a plan to transform the former school into spaces for community. But staff scored that pitch—along with the two other non-profit community-based proposals—at the bottom of its evaluation sheet.
No wonder. “Community interest” wasn’t one of the criteria considered. Close to 50 per cent of the final score, in fact, was made up of the bidder’s financial capability and financial offer. Not easy hills for cash-strapped community groups to climb.
To add insult to injury, councillors—who routinely debate cat bylaws more times than Fluffy has lives, and who just put off a decision on a municipal stadium again—refused Coun. Dawn Sloane’s motion to defer a final decision on the school sale for a month because of alleged flaws in the process.
St. Pat’s-Alexandra isn’t, by itself, the new Africville.
But the community is clearly under siege.
Pushing out the poor in the interests of progress.
Where have we heard that before?
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Rocky Jones: The past and future of the Nova Scotia human rights’ struggle
I wanted to ask Rocky Jones about his Wednesday lecture: “The Struggle for Human Rights in African Nova Scotian Communities, 1961-2011.”
No problem.
When?
Not today. He’s on a panel at a national conference on public policy. Saturday, he’s in Truro, keynote speaker at an International Year for People of African Descent symposium. Then Ottawa for the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council; he’s on the private broadcast industry’s regional self-regulatory panel. And, finally, back to Halifax for the inaugural talk in Dalhousie University’s James Robinson Johnston Distinguished Lecture Series.
I thought you’d retired.
He laughs.
No one is better positioned to speak about the struggle for human rights in Nova Scotia over the past 50 years—and the next 50—than Burnley “Rocky” Jones. He’s central to that struggle.
During the mid-sixties, Jones and his then wife set up Kwacha House, a drop-in centre for inner-city black youth. It so frightened city fathers they lobbied to shut it down.
In 1968, he invited the Black Panthers to Halifax. In response, Ottawa quickly funded the “moderate” Black United Front just to undercut his growing popularity among “disaffected negroes.”
Someone set his house on fire—twice—and the RCMP began not-so-secretly following him.
In 1970, he helped lead a March on city hall by thousands of activists after city council secretly—some things never change!—hired a racist city manager. This time, the good guys won.
In 1970, he helped launch Dalhousie’s unique Transition Year Program to assist local blacks and natives succeed in university. Later, he developed innovative employment programs for ex-inmates, ran unsuccessfully for political office and launched a massive oral history project to record the stories of black elders.
After graduating from Dalhousie’s then-new Indigenous Black and Mi'kmaq law program in 1992, he went on to become one of Nova Scotia’s preeminent civil rights lawyers, arguing cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
Recently, he was in the news again—at 70—lobbying successfully against the appointment of a white outsider to head up the Africville Heritage Society.
Unsurprisingly, he has opinions on the current state—and future direction—of our province's human rights movement.
“But you’ll have to come to the speech for those,” he says.
I’ll be there.
Related posts:
- Encounter at Kwacha House. an NFB documentary.
- Dalhousie's Transition Year Program: It All Began in a Duck Blind
- The Unlearned Lesson of Africville
- Here's a 1995 profile I wrote on Rocky for the Halifax Daily News.
Information on the Lecture:
The James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University launches its Distinguished Lecture Series by featuring
BURNLEY ROCKY JONES,
Lawyer and Human Rights Advocate, speaking on
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE AFRICAN NOVA SCOTIAN COMMUNITY, 1961-2011
Date: Wed. 23 Nov. 2011
Time: Reception: 6-7; Lecture: 7:15
Venue: Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, Potter Family Auditorium, Dalhousie University, 6100 University Ave (at Henry St.) Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Admission: Free
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
You showed them, Mr. Mayor
Dear Mayor Kelly,
Congratulations. You showed those dangerous... democrats.
Who knows what calamities might have befallen our fair city if those peaceful hooligans had been allowed to stage yet another one of their interminable, speak-and-repeat, consensus-decision-making general assemblies on our sacredly public Grand Parade (which, until recently, served as a sacredly private parking lot for you and your fellow councillors, but, hey, that’s another story...)?
Those hippies could certainly take a lesson from you on doing democratic decision making right. In-camera, mumble, mumble, secret handshake, consensus achieved, call in the cops, Chinese wall, operational decision, nothing to do with us, move along, move along...
Brilliant.
And that bargaining in bad faith thing you did with them? Inviting them to camp out at the Common to get them away from your office and then, zap! No Victoria Park, no Grand Parade, no Common. Nyah, nyah...
Bylaw enforcement time.
Bam!
I mean, really, if they wanted to flout the law, they should have have done it in style—shredding the city charter and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars like you did with that Common concert cash thingee. Now, that was flair!
The fact is, if you’re going to inconvenience the public, do it right. Forcing people to wander among tents and tenters to get where they’re going? No imagination. Close down the heart of the Common for a couple of weeks to put up a sound stage for some rockers no one pays to see. Now that takes guts.
So what if their tent city was less violent than the Palace on an average Friday night? That's not the point. The point is you showed them the point.
Personally, I thought the police—dozens and dozens of them, with their South Park Street-filling, light-flashing, murder-and-mayhem paddy wagons, patrol cars, motorcycles and tent-toting trailers and vans—showed remarkable restraint for having had to brave the elements on statutory holiday overtime pay. What is that? Double time? Double time and a half?
I agree. We have to be willing to pay a price for democracy, and it was vital the dismantling be done on Remembrance Day in the torrential rain and wind and mud so the public would be able to see for themselves exactly what those hippies had done to our parks. They'll remember.
Mr. Mayor, you showed them what your democracy looks like. Congratulations!
November 14, 2011
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.