Matt Stickland

  Yesterday municipal budget season officially kicked off. In the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing a lot more from and about the city’s (about-to-retire) chief administrative officer, Jaques Dubé, and its (unofficial) captain of budget season, chief financial officer Jerry Blackwood, so here’s a bit of an explainer on how the budget process works. It […]

Budget season kicked off Tuesday in Halifax Regional Municipality with an introduction to the budget’s strategic priorities. This step seems like a very high-level wishy-washy process with very little tangible impact, and it’s not an incorrect assumption to make. However these high-level discussions have a very real impact on how the city’s money (AKA your […]

It was a pretty boring HRM council meeting—a smattering of grants for community groups; a bit of extra money going out the door due to “inflationary pressures.” The only real big-ticket item to pass through Tuesday’s meeting was the official opening of budget pre-season. Council’s budget season is the highlight of municipal politics. It’s the […]

HRM’s executive council met on Monday and talked mainly about data. At the start of the pandemic, there was an increased concern about the safety of Asian women and non-binary people in the city, so the Women’s Advisory Committee asked for a staff report to find out how much of an issue it is, and […]

Friday has been a bad day for the city. Premier Tim Houston’s PC party has decided to toss out municipal planning and change the HRM’s charter. Housing Minister John Lohr’s bill, introduced today, will give the provincial government a veto over any bylaw the city makes about housing or development. The bill was introduced on […]

City council had a meeting Tuesday that was mostly routine, except for one huge two-hour debate about 1245 Edward Street, the house Dalhousie wanted to demolish this spring. Dalhousie showed up to council to say the house should not be protected. Dal brought a lawyer, a vice president and a government relations director, went on […]

This was a special meeting of council to keep the HRM’s major policy review on its new COVID-delayed schedule. This public hearing was initially scheduled for Sept. 29, but was postponed because of post-tropical storm Fiona. Since this meeting is more than 14 days after Sept. 29, there are no procedural hurdles like there would […]

As was first reported by CBC’s Micheal Gorman on Oct. 5, premier Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservative government is thinking about removing the legislature’s Speaker of the House. After the caucus meeting last week, Eastern Shore PC MLA Kent Smith said the party isn’t removing the current speaker, Keith Bain, “just succession planning.” Even though the […]

On Monday, Oct. 3, Halifax’s transportation standing committee met to discuss the upcoming transit payment app that the committee, and council, have already approved. Today’s short meeting was primarily about setting the fees for the cashless payment app, and answering councillors’ questions about its use. The app allows the city to offer new fare options […]