In the days after the Common concert funding scandal came to light last week, I noticed a new parlour game being played everywhere I went. The goal sounds simple: Name a contender who can challenge mayor Peter Kelly in next year’s municipal election. However, it’s surprisingly hard. Just a short list of names keeps coming up, heavy on the obvious choice of actual politicians—including NDP MP Peter Stoffer, former councillor and 2008 mayoral candidate Sheila Fougere, current councillor Sue Uteck and retired federal and provincial NDP leader Alexa McDonough—with only a few interesting outsiders, all of whom are already vocal critics of city government (such as pollster Don Mills, former concert promoter and current college prof Waye Mason and Commonwealth Games naysayer Bruce DeVenne).
Those suggestions represent a very real feeling among people that the concert scandal has made the so-far unbeatable Kelly vulnerable. Nonetheless, I should clarify that “everywhere I went” means errands and hanging out without leaving the peninsula, and at times the game of Peter Out was an exercise in the anti-Kelly choir singing to the converted. The suburban and rural voters who make up the bulk of Kelly’s base don’t seem as quick to pin the blame for any concert corruption on Kelly. We can all agree it’s better for the city when sketchy business like the concert funding scandal gets rooted out, but we see Kelly’s role differently. And we have for a while.
The urban chattering class has long complained about Kelly’s inability to lead, with references to the Commonwealth Games bid collapse, the sewage treatment plant breakdown and now the concert craziness as examples of his meddling incompetence. The Kelly voters, meanwhile, consider him a fine leader—a lone man in a thankless job, representing a whole city full of people against a bureaucracy so incompetent that it can’t stick to a budget for a sporting event and puts the electrical plugs below the waterline in a sewage plant.
As long as Halifax elections are picking a nice guy in chief, Kelly doesn’t need to pay any attention to people asking him to resign over Gig Trouble. He is an absolute genius at understanding his voter base, so if he’s comfortable entering the election cycle by playing the clueless card about his signature on the $400,000 loan document that triggered the concert funding scandal, I can’t question his confidence.
But if you stake your career on standing with the people against the bureaucracy, what happens when you turn into the bureaucrat working against the people? When you become the ball-dropping paper-pusher who doesn’t care about real people’s concerns?
At the risk of piling on to Kelly, this issue we are publishing news editor Tim Bousquet’s story “Peter Kelly’s failure of will” about what’s happened to Mary Thibeault’s estate since she passed away in 2004. Kelly agreed to be executor of the estate, which made him responsible for dispensing about $500,000 among her 18 heirs. Thibeault called Kelly a friend and named him as one of the heirs, and was doubtless comforted knowing her affairs would be taken care of by Halifax’s popular mayor after her death. Yet as Bousquet discovered on Monday of this week, when he first read Thibeault’s file at the Nova Scotia Court of Probate, the estate has remained unsettled for the past six-plus years, and some of the heirs have had it with Kelly.
When Bousquet approached Kelly to talk about why it’s taking so long to pay the relatives and charities named by Thibeault, Kelly demured, saying, “That’s a personal matter.” And so it was. At least until a group of heirs hired a lawyer to represent their interests against the foot-dragging Kelly.
“Let alone Peter Kelly’s blatant disregard for fulfilling the duties of an executor, his arrogance towards all of us beneficiaries really angers me,” is how a Thibeault cousin put it in documents filed with the court. It’s a stinging rebuke that shows Kelly losing his grip on the common touch. You can read the full story here.
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Peter Kelly’s failure of will
Commonwealth Games Investigation part one: Halifax 2014 big plans
How the sewage plant broke
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2011.
Is it just me, or is the Coast against Peter Kelly, (-:
Damn right, keep up the good work and keep digging, this poor excuse of a Mayor has to go.
Oh by the way, is Arrogance a firing offense, if so fire this Mayor.
Waye Mason for Mayor …HAHAHAHA
FFS ..he’s a promoter come blogger and a ‘teacher’ not a ‘prof’ of some music business course. And Stephanie Domet likes him, but that doesn’t count for much outside of the boundaries of Agricola, Quinpool & Bell Road.
Bruce Devenne for Mayor ..HAHA…lives in Sackville …rants on Rick Howe show…enough said
Sue Uteck for Mayor …. she’s not interested and has said so numerous times. A Liberal version of Maggie Thatcher, complete with handbag swinging capability.
Peter Stoffer for Mayor….the only credible candidate listed in your first paragraph. Some months after the federal election he’ll be sitting on the benches wondering if he can face a few more years listening to the faux outrage of new NDP leader Mulcair. I hope he quickly comes to the conclusion that dumping PK is a mission possible, takes his MP pension and departs the whorehouse in Ottawa.
Or we could twist the arm of Bernie Smith and tell him fixing old Halifax is more important than fixing old British cars.
I resent being labelled a “Kelly supporter” simply because of my surbuban residence. I have proudly been an “Anybody but Kelly” voter long before many urbanites got on the bandwagon.
HRM is too big and diverse for any Mayor. De-amalgamation is the solution. We should have at least 3 Mayors. One for Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford.
Bill Black would be someone I would consider, he’s successful in his own right, doesn’t need the money, is a businessman and could probably, finally kill of the heritage wonks and bring some life back into this dirty big town that thinks it’s a city.
Alexa – she’s the Dame Vera Lynn of her day, but that day is long past.
Bill Black would be the kind of guy to get things done around here. Successful businessman, obviously knows how to run a company (which is essentially what the municipality is). We need a businessman(woman?) who knows how to run a private sector company to bring some leadership and innovation.
Someone else that I recently heard a rumor for mayoral candidate is Carl Yates, director of Halifax Water. Any thoughts on that fellas?
Yeah, a business model. That’s what we need. Something like NS Power maybe, or the people who came up with the P3 schools contracts. Or maybe someone from the financial sector…those people who brought us to near economic collapse in 2008. Yeah, that’s what we need around here.
@longwalker: Carl Yates?!? The guy who’s given himself salary increases of 40 percent over two years? The man who has no problem justifying 20 percent increases for other managers at the Water Commission? The guy who was chided by UARB because the financial data supporting his most recent rate increase application was of “poor quality”? That Carl Yates?
Jesus, I hope not.
I found it interesting that Cathie O’Toole took the CFO job at Halifax Water actually. I don’t know if this is good or bad. She’s described as competent and honest, so that can’t hurt with an operation as messed up as the one that Yates runs. But in an interview with the Coast she claims that the Water Commission is “close enough to HRM that I can keep an eye on what’s going on in HRM”…ignoring the fact that when she was CFO *for* HRM she apparently didn’t even have a clue about this shit that English, Anstey, Kelly, Ferguson and MacKay were perpetrating. Uh-huh. “Keep an eye” my ass.
Realist: I didn’t offer an opinion on Carl Yates for Mayor, I just heard a brief rumor around the office. The salary increases are retarded, I definitely agree. As for the rate increases, I happen to know first hand what kind of terrible condition the sewer system around the city is in and what kind of money it is going to take to bring it to a standard where it will operate reliably for the next 100 years. HRM didn’t put the money into the system over the past 100 years, and when they couldn’t deal with the backlog of required work, they handed it to the Water Commission to deal with. Kinda like “Yeah we’re giving you all this FREE stuff, its worth millions of dollars! All you gotta do is… maintain what hasn’t been maintained for a century and you’re good!”
Nor do I think that the Water Commission is “messed up” on the whole. There are screw ups just like everywhere else in government but honestly its a tighter ship than most.
One last thing: when Cathie took the job at the Water Commission, the term “keep an eye” I think was meant that she still has access to most of HRM’s internal job postings and can take something higher-up if one is posted. I doubt she’d try to keep an eye on the finances.
@BigJMcC: I didn’t say privatize city hall. I said someone who can run a private company efficiently, with leadership and while keeping costs down and operational status where it should be. Don’t spew bullshit if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
“HRM is too big and diverse for any Mayor. De-amalgamation is the solution. We should have at least 3 Mayors. One for Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford.”
I would hardly call Halifax + Dartmouth + Bedford as too big and too diverse. If what you say is true then I can’t fathom how the Torontos and Vancouvers and Montreals of the world manage to govern themselves. If HRM were to de-amalgamate I could only see it making sense to split the far-reaching, smaller communities off, as their priorities are black-and-white to those of the more urban areas in HRM. Splitting up Halifax + Dartmouth + Bedford goes back to the old system where the services are in Halifax but the taxes to pay for them are kept in Bedford, and where it’s crazy difficult to coordinate things like transit.
“he’s successful in his own right, doesn’t need the money”
Very rarely do people view themselves as ‘not needing the money’. If that was the case the millionaires and billionaires of the world would give it all away. Instead, those with the money are typically in the money BECAUSE they think they need it, and do what it takes to get it. That attitude doesn’t tend to change once those people are in positions of power,.
Bernie Smith, nuff said!
A man of integrity and honesty. A man who truly cares about ALL the citizens of Halifax.
Sue Uteck would be so frigging awesome as Mayor.
Too good to be true though, Kellys gonna win re-election again.