On Wednesday, Feb 26, Halifax budget season’s regular debates had their curtain call. After about a month of intense scrutiny and discussion, Halifax’s business units have mostly set their budgets for a city budget of about $1.3 billion. There are a few items that council may consider funding, which will be debated on March 19, […]
Matt Stickland
Matt spent 10 years in the Navy where he deployed to Libya with HMCS Charlottetown and then became a submariner until ‘retiring’ in 2018. In 2019 he completed his Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College. Matt is an almost award winning opinion writer.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax libraries budget shows city working against itself on parking
The regular season of HRM’s budget debates ended on Feb 26, with a slew of routine budget presentations from HRM’s public libraries, the municipal auditor general, the city’s corporate service business units and the fiscal services business unit. Here’s how that meeting of the city’s Budget Committee—a group whose membership is all of council—went down. […]
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Will council end driving subsidies and let Halifax Transit succeed?
Halifax Transit gave its budget presentation late on Feb 20 and early into Feb 21, on days two and three of the budget debates about Halifax’s operations business units. Even as Halifax Transit is bringing back routes lost to COVID and adding $1 million in new spending, its annual budget is down $7.9 million. All […]
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Windsor Street redesign is dead; long live the Windsor Street redesign
Much like that other saviour, Jesus Christ, the Windsor Street Exchange redesign project came back to life at Tuesday, Feb 25’s council meeting after a brief period of being dead. Last month, council crucified city staff for not prioritizing council’s priorities in the new design for the Windsor Street Exchange and rejected staff’s proposal. One […]
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Halifax is finally able to think about non-car options
Halifax’s budget debates, specifically the Department of Public Works budget, is where hope for the future goes to die. Even though there are reasons for optimism, it’s hard to maintain that optimism in the face of Halifax’s dire affliction: This city is suffering from a severe case of the tragedy of the commons. Before the […]
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Halifax to increase police budgets
Like most of Halifax’s recent budgets, deciding this year’s budget is not easy. Councillors are aware that Haligonians are struggling in record numbers so they’re trying to make sure every tax dollar spent is spent well. Or at least, that’s what they say they want. The Halifax Regional Police are asking for a few things […]
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Council approves more firefighters to combat slow response times
There’s no official contest to determine which of Halifax’s business units’ budgets is the most depressing, but if there were, Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency would be annual contenders. In more than any other business unit, Halifax’s bad decision-making is most evident in fire chief Ken Stuebing’s $98-million fire department budget. Like they have been […]
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Halifax mayor vacations in the Caribbean as council debates homelessness
Last week, most of Halifax’s city council tried to debate the future of public safety services in the HRM. Only they were missing one key voice from those discussions: The mayor’s. While council waded through a bevy of issues over the course of two days, ranging from emergency response times to Halifax’s approach to homelessness, […]
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Councillor Purdy asks city about integrating the Integrated Mobility Plan
Halifax’s aspirational and hopefully one-day transformative plan to solve congestion in Halifax got an assist from one of its biggest opponents this week, at Halifax Regional Council’s regular Tuesday meeting. Halifax’s Integrated Mobility Plan has not been implemented very well since first being passed in 2017, because city staff just can’t help themselves from prioritizing […]
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Council approves capital budget, staff corruption
Halifax’s municipal council doesn’t normally meet on Fridays, except during budget season. That’s when Fridays are held open as a contingency meeting day, to be used as necessary when the debates about how to spend Halifax’s $1 billion-plus budget go long. This year, councillors are asking good questions to ensure that things are settled with […]
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Council sends police tank to budget playoffs
Right off the gate on Friday’s continuation of Wednesday’s Halifax Capital Budget debate, councillor Shawn Cleary took the police tank out of budget and put it on the Budget Adjustment List (BAL). For new followers of municipal budget season, the budget adjustment list debates are the playoffs of budget season. Throughout the budget season […]
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The high cost of low taxes
Halifax’s budget committee meeting on Wednesday, Feb 5 was spicy. The meeting, which is technically still on-going and will resume Friday, Feb 7 at 9:30am, started this year’s budget debates and officially kicked off budget season. This year Halifax is expected to have a budget of $1.3 billion, and the revenue gap is $69 million. […]