Every few months, there’s talk in the air about radically transforming the structure of HRM or of the Halifax council—de-amalgamate, cut HRM in two, adopt right-wing American libertarian-style tax policies (i.e., “tax reform”) or, most recently, reduce the number of councillors. This last idea is now the subject of a council subcommittee and, in typical non-committal, finger-to-the-wind fashion, mayor Peter Kelly has announced he’s neither opposed to nor in support of the idea, but might come around one way or the other, after everyone else has made up their minds.
Well, since Kelly’s not going to demonstrate leadership on the issue, it’s left to the rest of us to tell him it’s a rotten idea.
There’s a notion that council spends much of its time bickering over petty issues and so reducing the number of councillors will reduce the bickering, and this will all be for the better.
But in real terms, shrinking council means less democracy: councillors would represent more people, and so the distance between people and their government increases. If you think getting the sidewalk in front of your house fixed is difficult now, just wait until your councillor lives clear across town and has twice the number of constituents.
More to the point, “bickering” is an essential part of the political process. We elect councillors so they can represent our concerns at council. If all citizens had the same concerns, and the same point of view on all the issues, then we would only need one councillor for all of HRM. But we live in a diverse municipality—there are urbanites, suburbanites, rural folk; rich people, poor people; conservatives, liberals; transit lovers, car commuters; people who care about cats, people who don’t; and on. Representatives of each sort of people bring unique concerns and unique contributions to council. A full hashing out of views—the much-maligned “bickering”—makes council better, not worse.
Reducing the number of councillors necessarily means reducing the number of people whose concerns are heard at council. And who’s that going to be? You guessed it: poor and marginalized people. The best financed and most connected citizens already get heard before the rest of us, a trend that will only get amplified if each councillor represents a larger population.
The continual cry for radical structural change of council represents a failure, not of the system, but of the councillors and mayor themselves.
No matter where we live in HRM, we interact with each other in all sorts of complex and interdependent ways, impossible to separate out with arbitrary lines on a map. We’re all in this together. Amalgamation and the establishment of a large municipal council was therefore a good thing—it created a political entity that reflects the social and economic reality of the city-state of Halifax.
Real political leadership would rise to the occasion—make sure that each area’s specific concerns and needs are fully represented within a mosaic-like city-state that is moving intelligently, as a whole, into the future.
Rural areas already provide our water and give us a place to dump our waste, and they are our potential foodshed, a resource that is woefully underused. Imagine what kind of economic transformations could occur if city government worked to promote the eating of seafood processed in the fishing villages of HRM and livestock and crops from the Musquodoboit Valley.
Suburbs have economic significance far beyond the stereotypes used to disparage them—their residents provide both the customers and the work force for local businesses. The suburbs were built in the era of cheap oil, and enormous challenges lie ahead in converting them to more dense, transit-friendly population centres; failure to do so will pull the rug out from under those businesses that sustain the entire city-state.
The urban core provides over-arching identity and community focus, and should therefore be celebrated and developed with that identity in mind.
Real leadership would help all residents of HRM realize a common purpose. Unfortunately, we have only timid politicians discussing reduced representation and handing governance over to a power elite with a narrow, selfish agenda.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2010.
Disagree. I believe in a precinct approach. That is for Halifax, say a maximum of eleven precincts, each with their own community council that deals with issues relevant only to that area. But only the one main council with 11 councillors plus a mayor. Why 12? Any more than 12 people in a room and they cannot make an intelligent decision – this is one reason why juries are normally 12 people. Would you suggest that this council disproves that old axiom?
I don’t have a problem with bylaw issues– chickens and cats and such— being decided at community council level, but substantive issues like transit, budgeting, etc, should be dealt with at full council.
I can’t seem to find it at present, but there’s a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin about the evils of reducing the number of representatives in the name of expediency. Government should not be run like a business…. discord, debate, second thoughts, revisiting issues, some shouting and maybe a fist fight or two are all very good things, in terms of representing the people.
There is such a thing as too much representation; as the problem will be analyzed to the point of paralysis.
There is oh, so, well intentioned egalitarianism in getting everyone included, and Maritimers more than anyone take their points of view extremely seriously. The real victim here is sound, efficient, progressive decision making: Too many cooks actually do spoil the broth.
No offense Tim…but the last damn thing we need is different levels of municipal govenment…jesus the thought of it makes me want to pack my bags & leave the damn country ! Like Brewnoser has pointed out, 12 seems to be plenty, with IMO only allowing the 11 elected councillors a vote on any issues. That way there can never be a tie vote. The Mayor (#12) oversee’s the council & has a vote only in case of a tie, which shouldn’t ever happen if the other 11 elected officials are in the meeting where they are suppose to be.
I believe the same needs to be done for the Province. 18 Counties in the Province..18 MLA’s & 1 extra for the Capital city, for a total of 19. We have so much Government that we can’t afford to pay for it all, with our small population base. Since we can’t quickly raise the amount of working citizens aka tax payers, lets do the quickest thing. Make the elected groups smaller. Might as well trim the fat from the school boards …tell me again why the Province needs more than 1 ? There is way too much Government getting in everyones face & I say it’s way past time to cut back on the fat, & throw the Pork Barrel out at the same time !
You’re so off-base on this one, you can’t even see ‘base’ from where you are.
If more representation is a good thing, then it would stand to reason that a 1:1 ratio of citizen to representative would be ideal. Ever try to get 25 (or 20? or 10? Or even 3?) people to agree on anything? The more people around the table, the more difficult it becomes to actually make a decision.
An aside: I’ve always wondered what kind of people call their Councillors (instead of the customer service line our taxes pay for) to get sidewalks fixed and roads plowed. Now I know – it’s YOU. If our Councillors weren’t so busy fielding the calls that HRM Customer Service should be dealing with, maybe they’d actually be able to get something done.
And finally … no, no, NO. Bickering is not an essential part of the political process, unless said bickering actually leads to a decision. In HRM’s case, bickering only leads to more bickering. This, while other cities have Councils that are making decisions that are actually moving their cities ahead while we fall behind.
I am so glad you’re not anywhere near the policy-making function for this city, Mr. Bousquet. That would be a disaster.
The council is pretty useless. They are not experts on any particular issue, and because they are so parochial they do a poor job of making decisions about local expenditures; everybody wants something built in his own district.
I would suggest a regional council with about 7 people (6 councillors plus one mayor) that handles high-level planning and budgetary issues as they relate directly to the public. Technical decisions should be made by engineers and so on. A couple of regional authorities should be created to handle coordinated local expenditures. For example, there should be a single transportation authority in Halifax that would bring together roads, bridges, and transit. Such an authority would be able to weigh the costs and benefits of, say, another bridge lane or road widening versus adding ferries, buses, or trains. Right now we have a bunch of separate entities each with an incentive to inflate itself by coming up with new projects.
I cannot believe you attend these worthless meetings every week and then can conclude that the present size of council is fine. It is clearly far too big and as a result it does not work. It needs to be cut in half.