A subcommittee of Halifax council today voted to make the council smaller– by just three members.
The Governance & Boundary Review Committee passed the following motion:
MOVED by Councillor Mosher, seconded by Councillor Dalrymple that Halifax Regional Council be reduced to 20 Councillors plus the Mayor with four Community Councils made up of five Districts.
That motion now goes to the full council, probably in June.
This afternoon, I spoke with councillor Gloria McCluskey, who sits on the committee and was present at the meeting. As she relates, councillor Reg Rankin stood up and said that he’d like to have a council of 15 members, but that wouldn’t be acceptable to the full council, so he moved a council of 19 members. According to McCluskey, councillor Linda Mosher then asked for 20 members, so there could be four community councils of five members each. That was the motion that passed.
McCluskey had harsh words for Rankin. “If he wanted 15 members, he should’ve moved 15 members,” she said. “But he didn’t want much of a change, because his district is safe.” McCluskey went on to explain that Rankin’s district (Timberlea), along with councillor Barry Dalrymple’s district (Fall River–Dalrymple voted for the motion as well), have about 20,000 residents in them, compared to 15-16,000 in urban districts. “They’ll make fewer urban districts,” said McCluskey. It’s her contention that urban councillors have more constituency work than rural councillors, because there are more traffic issues and so forth.
McCluskey herself is ambivalent on council size, saying that the real issue is cost, not size. “Before amalgamation, we had 64 councillors, and it cost less than 23 are costing us now,” she said, referring to all the elected reps in the old cities of Dartmouth and Halifax, the town of Bedford, and the county of Halifax.
“If people think this [making council smaller] is going to save money, they’re crazy,” said McCluskey.
Readers will recall that I’ve editorialized against reducing the size of council.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2010.
Gloria is right. It’s not about size. However, I’d humbly suggest it’s not all about cost either.
There are two sides the request for a smaller council: what people want, and what council wants. Council obviously is a numbers-driven decision maker – i.e. show them how much they’ll make and how much they’ll lose and they might talk about it.
For constituents, the complaints about council size are driven in large by an existing (and/or perceived) lack of effective leadership and representation on council due to the large difference between urban and rural priorities.
From what I’m reading here, it sounds like the suggested number of ’20’ councilors was arbitrarily suggested without rhyme or reason (perhaps there is a good reason behind it, but it’s not mentioned in the article). So, the committee didn’t really delve into the core of why people are asking for a reduced council size (addressing the urban-rural divide). Yet, their solution of dropping a couple of councilors doesn’t really address the cost issues either. So, neither municipal concerns nor constituent concerns are addressed in this recommendation.
I don’t know what will happen next, but at the very least people should ask their councilor to scrutinize this recommendation, and have the back-bone to send it back to committee if the recommendation doesn’t solve the concerns of stakeholders.
Look at this from the Chronic:
“TimOuthit wrote:
Randy5 – if you recall, I predicted that the Committee would recommend cutting 1 – 3. This is exactly what has happened and exactly what happened 8 years ago! I’m sorry to see that you view thinking and passion and grandstanding! Call me and we can chat.”
Bull, he left the committee because his feelings got hurt, nothing more, nothing less.
And I love how mealy mouthed Rankin said “I’d for 15, but no one would agree”
No, he and the other “Safe at 20” councillors had no intention of making that deep of a cut.
This is an interesting power play. Rankin and his conspirators are trying to consolidate power for the suburban vote primarily, which typically comprises of uppity middle class types who (wrongly, I might add) think that they’re under-represented in council. I guess they want to pass more no visible clotheslines bylaws.
If they want to reduce council size, I say allow rural areas to self-govern (install something like a sub-council) and vote independently of council on smaller bylaw issues, then report to HRM on larger issues like the budget with a voted with a weighted vote. That would make council more efficient, and probably more cost-effective too.
Feelings got hurt? Well, that ‘s a new one! Cheers …Tim
Hmmm ….”feelings got hurt”? Well, that’s a new one! No, I stand behind my comments to Randy5. LOL
Cheers,
Tim
I’m unsure why we don’t represent by population, like 1 councillor for every 30-35 thousand people. This is a number represented in other cities in Canada. IF the councillors there can do it, why not here ?
With 350,000/375,00 or so residents, why not go with 11 councillors & a Mayor ?
How much money would that save us ?
I remember recently seeing a report where Calgary has 14 councillors for 988,000 residents, what gives with that. That area is doing well, I cannot remember ever seeing an article on how hard done by the people are out there, because they have too few councillors !
Who apart from the councilors themselves feel the HRM somehow needs the same amount of councilors as the greater Toronto Municipality (23)?