The Clairmont report on violence in Halifax was issued in May. It took five months for mayor Peter Kelly to schedule a presentation from Clairmont to council on the matter, and city staff will get around to issuing some bureaucratic mumbo jumbo about Clairmont’s recommendations maybe around Christmastime, unless all the partying pushes it back […]
Tim Bousquet
Brogan decision
Readers will recall that six-year-old Joshua Penny died in October, 2006, and that Paddy Brogan was found not guilty in Joshua’s death in July of this year. Here’s a Toronto Star story on it: SYDNEY, N.S.–A judge found a Cape Breton man not guilty today of impaired driving causing the death of a young boy, […]
Waterside Centre– another public hearing?
I was discussing the proposed Waterside Centre development with someone this morning, and we both came to the realization that there are some pretty complicated process issues involved with delaying the vote on the application until after the election. Even before getting to the election issue, we have to consider that council’s procedures state that: […]
New (lilly white) cops
Our new cops. Anyone notice anything, er, alike about them? The force has also said it wants to increase the number of visible minorities in uniform but Thursday’s graduating class was all white, a change from recent years. Const. Dean Simmonds, a recruiter who also gave diversity training and taught bias-free policing to the graduating […]
HRM delays on violence report
I was on CBC radio last week along with Marilla Stephenson, to discuss the Chamber’s mayoral debate. I got up early, put a pot of coffee on, wrote up some notes for what I wanted to say. It was a phoner, and the Information Morning folks talked first to Stephenson, who went on to say […]
School uniforms
David Boyd is running for mayor, and not for the Halifax school board, but he has issued a press release calling for a school uniform policy in Halifax schools. No word yet if he has gotten around to reading the city’s five-year transit plan, or if someone has told him of the existence of the […]
10,000 tourists
There are about 10,000 tourists in town today, disembarking from four cruise ships. That’s a record. I don’t pretend to understand the economics of cruise ships. Perhaps more people are opting off the European vacation and taking relatively less expensive cruises closer to home instead. Maybe the cruise lines are offering fantastic deals in a […]
Ethical procurement
I received a press release today: On September 16, JUDES (Just Us! Development and Education Society), NS BALLE (the Nova Scotia Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) Oxfam Canada, TransFair Canada, and the Ecology Action Centre Food Action Committee sent a two question survey to all the candidates running for HRM council. The purpose of […]
Internet vote this weekend
The internet portion of the municipal election runs this Saturday through Monday, Oct 4-6. But the “real” election day, the day the polling places are open, isn’t until two weeks later, Oct 18. This unfortunate scheduling presents The Coast with a pickle—when do we publish our mayoral coverage? Many community organizations and the candidates themselves […]
Election season
One after another, councillors spent an entire hour last night facing the camera and boldly condemning speeding through neighbourhoods.
Waterside vote delayed
Halifax council was scheduled to vote on the controversial Waterside development Tuesday night, but earlier in the day word came that developer Ben McCrea had asked that council put off the vote until after the election and consider buying him off—in return for tax gifts, he has offered to consider reducing the building height from […]
Internet voting foul-up
Sure, it’s a small thing. All the same… Neal Alderson of Dartmouth was surprised Monday to receive two e-voting cards, and two separate personal identification numbers, in the mail. Just as surprising, his wife Carla also received two. While he received one for “Neal” and another for “Neil,” hers differed in the spelling of her […]

