Tuesday’s meeting of Halifax Regional Council is shaping up to be consequential for this city. It could be the TSN turning point. It could be like Boston’s Nathan Horton scoring a goal with just over 10 minutes left in game seven against the Leafs. It could also be a dud. It’ll really depend on council’s performance: If they are able to put aside district squabbles and demand accountability from staff, then we’re in business. At issue are council’s big plans for Halifax, and the fact city staff aren’t making progress on nearly half of them.
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At last council meeting, an update on the city’s strategic planning implementation was attached as an “information item” to the meeting’s agenda—an innocuous FYI of a report that councillors maybe didn’t have to read or think about, because it wasn’t getting talked about at the meeting. Thankfully councillor Tony Mancini recognized the potential importance of the update, and he asked for this information item to become something council has to discuss, thus it was brought forward to Tuesday’s meeting where it will get a presentation from city staff. They will explain why the city is struggling to implement such a large share of council’s priorities.
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This presentation—and council’s debate about it—is supposed to happen early in the meeting to make sure chief administrative officer Cathie O’Toole can be present to answer council’s questions about the bureaucracy’s lacklustre performance in implementing strategic plans. This meeting will be consequential not just academically by addressing council’s concerns with their strategic priorities, but because these priorities influence city spending in annual budgets, and work is already happening on the upcoming budget. This meeting could determine if the budget is going in the right direction or if major changes to the planned spending are needed to meet a set of new, council-refreshed strategic priorities.
In theory, if council gets this right, at the end of this meeting, we will have an effective strategic plan and a vastly different budget than last year. If they fix their strategic planning in time for this year’s budget, we’ll be looking at the start of a very bright future. If they drop the ball, we’ll be stuck waiting at least another year before we start the rebuild. After the game, be sure to tune in to SportsCentre to see if this meeting was a TSN turning point.
This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.
