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This week, HRM Regional Council will gather to review and finalize the 2016/17 budget, marking the end of one fiscal year and the slow march toward this fall’s general election. Come October you’ll be able to let the municipality’s 16 councillors and one mayor know how you really feel about their efforts, but who can wait that long?


The Coast wants your feedback right now. We’re once again opening up public voting for our 11th annual council report card so you can tell us how well council has performed these past 12 months.
What you judge the councillors on is entirely up to you. Voting records, political effectiveness, policy choices, community involvement, tweets—the choice is yours. Voting will close sometime in the next three weeks (we’ll let you know when). 
You can read last year’s report card here (previous years are to your right).
In the below table please offer a grade ranging from A+ to F for city hall’s 17 elected representatives (making sure to hit “submit” at the end).
As this is a rigorous, scientific undertaking, we kindly ask you to abide by a couple of ground rules. First, if you’re not familiar with a particular councillor’s presence in City Hall it’s better to leave that grade blank than throw off the average. Our past council coverage is located right here, in case you need a refresher. We’ve omitted newbie councillor Tony Mancini—who replaced now-federal MP Darren Fisher—from the list as he’s only been on the job a few weeks.
We also ask that you only vote once. An automated script repeatedly pumping out grades will spoil the fun and possibly make us scrap this whole endeavor. Last year we had doubts that the honour system would work, but you all proved yourselves a trustworthy bunch so we’re trying it again.
We’ll average out the public grade and print it alongside our own assessments in a few weeks.
Related Stories
City Council Report Card 2015
Welcome to the 2014 City Council Report Card
Welcome to the 2013 City Council Report Card
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.
Never so disappointed in Council Members for wasting hundreds of thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars and socking it to the tax-payer to pay more money, especially for water, signage for re-branding and paying consultants and poll takers for results, that they don’t follow anyway, just
so that they can continue with this fiasco of needing more money to waste.
Bunch of fucking deadbeats. A few stand out as truly giving a fuck but the majority rules and in this case they make serious money fucking us. “Oh, here’s a report telling us to do this but that won’t get me relected so I’ll do this stupid move instead…”
Today Matt Whitman and Gloria were on the radio and clearly stated they make less money than MPs and MLA and should not have to take a pay freeze…..HELLO…MPs are away from their home weeks upon weeks while in Ottawa and deserve a big salary. MLA look after health care , education, laws. You councillors vote on Donairs, Segways, Signs, Pot holes, chickens, cats, give us a break. Suck it up, you are not that important. Your job used to be part time. Glad to see Waye Mason and Steve Craig agree that councillor pay is high enough and the pay freeze is a good idea.
The province has made considerable strides in protecting animals with its new animal protection laws and Canada is moving in the same direction. Meanwhile, our city, home of the widely known Earl Grey and the Tuxedo Party, seems to have done very little and to rely on volunteer rescuers to ease the suffering of feral, stray and abandoned cats. Recently awarded animal control contracts make no provision for cats. Most of the council signed the Tuxedo Party pledge before the last election. Did they forget this? Did they choose to ignore it while talking about such serious issues as donairs and city logos? Disappointing and embarrassing.
Abortions for all! No? Very well, no abortions for anyone! No?! Hmm… Abortions for some, miniature H^L^F^X flags for others!
It sucks that the reality is that we rarely see reasonable alternatives to these assholes.
Listening to Whitman last few days makes me see how arrogant this twit is. He makes it sound like he’s the only person in HRM working extraordinarily hard, extra hours, long days to eek a living on his poor Deputy Mayor salary.
Fool.
Thousands in HRM are struggling. Your pay should be based on average pay of citizens, thus you work harder to make sure we’re all doing better. And oh yeah Matty, what training and skills make you so special to sit in a chair? NONE.
Our esteemed councilors have to remember that they are there to represent the people who live in their communities. If they forget that fact, they may find themselves expelled instead of just getting a bad grade.
The nice thing is in Dartmouth at least there is a whole slate of new people to run against the incumbents who have really made some major mistakes the last four years. I know the majority of them are average citizens who are going to run to try to make a difference.