News

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 […]

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 […]

One after another, councillors spent an entire hour last night facing the camera and boldly condemning speeding through neighbourhoods.

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 […]

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 […]

I’ll just leave this one out there with no comment… From allnovascotia.com: An associate deputy director in the Intergovernmental Affairs Department scored the largest pay raise in the Nova Scotia civil service last year. Scott Logan earned $202,822.98 in the year ending March 31, 2008. That was 19% more than the previous year, and 45% […]

I interviewed both candidates in the District 13 (Northwest Arm- South End) council contest. You can hear them both here, unedited: Sue Uteck Beverly Miller Also, Andy Murdoch, our web editor, has complied a thorough district profile that’s of much interest.

I’m curious what people think of Democracy 250. My take is that the whole thing is part tourism promotion, part get-out-the-vote, part, well, graft. But even if you don’t agree with that last part (and I’m open to persuasion), I’d like to know how we measure the first two. I called Democracy 250 and asked […]

Who do you want for mayor? Let us know via The Coast’s on-line survey, found on our home page. We’ll keep this poll up until at least Wednesday, Oct. 1. It’ll be interesting to see if and by how much Coast readers differ from the final overall results.

There are some pretty nifty web-based election resources out there, which some people might find useful. First, our web editor Andy Murdoch points us to a compilation of census data applied to local election districts. I’ll be using this information for all sorts of journalistic purposes into the future. It’s really quite incredible, and I […]

I’m not sure which aspect of this is more ridiculous: That someone who can’t navigate through a simple internet vote probably won’t be able to figure out how to get the city’s web site to watch a video showing them how to vote, OR That the video takes six minutes to explain a 20-second voting […]

After Peter Kelly gave a milquetoast “everything’s fine and getting better” opening statement, Sheila Fougere came out swinging, saying that “back room chats and the lack of a strong leader” had left HRM taxpayers paying 2/3 of the harbour solutions cleanup costs (as opposed to the 1/3 that the city had originally hoped to pay), […]