Wednesday night, the city held a public information meeting public input meeting Ideas Expo “shape your city” exercise, to do something or another about the proposal to put two roundabouts on North Park Street. Does that sound cynical? Well, it is. I’m not sure what the point of these things are. Used to be, we […]
Tim Bousquet
Posted inNews + Opinion
Cop budget approved by Police Commissioners
This is a longer version of an article that appears in today’s dead tree version of The Coast. First, however, I must apologize to deputy police chief Bill Moore, for misquoting him, here, when I wrote that he said that “most people aren’t interested in” the location of sexual assaults. As I usually do at […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax to get 22 new buses
City council was poised to approve the purchase of 22 new buses Tuesday, but the matter was put off for two weeks to make “minor” changes in a staff report, says deputy CAO Mike Labrecque. The changes will not affect purchase price, the number or kind of buses, nor the vendor, he says. The bus […]
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Much compost ending up in landfills
Halifax’s waste system was once regarded as cutting edge, but now seems to be lagging in terms of increasing the amount diverted from the landfill. As the city is developing a new solid waste strategy, and is considering at least the possibility of sending waste outside HRM, The Coast will take an occasional look at […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
This week at city council
This week’s meeting was yet again a short one, and even councillors are starting to comment on how little is handled at council meetings, as compared to last year. A reader complains that I don’t explain why this is a bad development, which is a fair comment. A fuller, and more researched, explanation will have […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
This week at city council
There were only two items of importance agendized for this week’s council meeting: sidewalks and stormwater. The sidewalk discussion went on for three hours, but doesn’t much directly affect readers in the urban area, except it raises interesting philosophical issues that we should worry about down the road. The stormwater discussion was postponed for two […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Crime mapping website now live for Halifax
The Halifax police department has just made live a new webstie that maps police calls. See the site here. The crime mapping site is still in “pilot” stage. It now currently tracks only five types of calls: theft, theft from motor vehicles, break and enter, robberies and assault. Notably, the category “assault” does not include […]
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Much ado about nothing: no cops will get laid off
No one comes off looking good in this week’s mini cop non-drama: not the cops, not the police commissioners and, mostly, not the media. The silliness started in late January when the Chronicle-Herald, played by the police union, ran a story with the sensationalist headline “28 Halifax police jobs in jeopardy.” Never mind that the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
New problems for Peter Kelly from Thibeault estate
Clarification, February 11: Elizabeth Herrit’s lawyer, Larry Graham, called The Coast Friday to return a Coast call made late Thursday afternoon. That is, he did not initiate the conversation. That should’ve been made more clear in the article. The saga of Peter Kelly and Mary Thibeault continues. In September, a judge removed Kelly as executor […]
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No permits have been issued for new convention centre
An observer might look at the gigantic hole in the ground between Argyle and Market Streets, feel the blasting for excavation and see the bulldozers loading up dump trucks to haul away the rock and think, “that new convention centre is really moving along.” That observer would be wrong. In fact, the city has not […]
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Reefer sadness
November 6, 2012 was a momentous day for marijuana in North America. That’s when citizens in Washington state and Colorado voted in favour of ballot initiatives that decriminalize the possession of marijuana by adults. Washington’s Initiative 502 regulates the sale of marijuana through the state’s liquor control board, and extends drunk driving laws to cover […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
This week at city council
Bayers Lake expansion The first item of importance was the approval of some property buy-backs necessary for the expansion of the BLIP agreed to last year. “Buy-backs” are the last part of a development agreement the city entered into when it sold a big chunk of west and to the south of Kent to BANC […]