Updated below
At tonight’s meeting, Halifax council agreed– in secret– to purchase a property– for a secret amount of money. All very cryptic.
But, given that the purchase is related to a “regional transportation corridor,” and given that the three councillors who objected to it were Jennifer Watts, Jerry Blumenthal and Dawn Sloane, it’s a reasonable guess that the property involved the potential future widening of Bayers Road. (The road is the border between Watts’ and Blumenthal’s districts, and a widened road would funnel increased traffic directly into Sloane’s district.)
There are two Bayers Road properties listed for sale on MLS—a four-bedroom house at 7020 Bayers listed at $249,900, and a two-bedroom house at 6850 Bayers listed for $169,900.
Congratulations—you just bought one of them.
Discussion of property purchases can legally be held in secret council sessions, because there is expected to be some back-and-forth niggling over price, and the city needs to go into such negotiations without having an open hand. But in this instance, the cryptic paperwork states that the city is actually entering into a purchase agreement, not making an offer, so the secrecy played no role in negotiating a lower price.
Moreover, this purchase involves a contentious political issue—the controversial proposal to widen Bayers Road. At a public meeting last year, several hundred area residents came out in opposition to the proposal. Such matters of large public concern, which, if it proceeds, will cost the taxpayers many millions of dollars, are absolutely a matter for public debate and government openness.
Council is cheating the public of that responsibility.
Update, 12 August, 12:44: The realtor for the house for sale at 7020 Bayers says he has no contact with the city concerning the property. The realtor for the house for sale at 6850 Bayers hasn’t returned my phone call. So….
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
wtf? did they not learn from their mistakes on Chebucto? So behind closed doors without any public input this bunch of clowns are pushing through something hundreds said they didn’t want.
Please tell me there is time to rally against this foolishness
peaceout
The property at 7020 really needs to go regardless, as does its 2 neighboring homes. Possibly not a worse location for a house in the whole city, right at the start of the 102. It would be like living in a house with the 401 at your curb. A huge traffic hazard as well for anyone trying to get in and out of the driveway. If this is it, good move HRM, now expropriate the other ones next to it.
Passing through that area on Chebucto is now much more efficient. Sorry, but the city did the right thing there and there was far too much complaining for having about 3 properties affected…
I used to be on the pro side of the Chebucto thing – just go do it. But now, even though I use it a lot, and it works fine for my car most days, I can’t help but think how hard it must be to get in and out of those driveways. And that silly left turn into the back of the Bay and on to Walmart blocks up traffic all the way back to the rotary (I am still calling it that) when it is two lanes downhill.
Perhaps it might have been made better with design, but it seems to me like we ended up with a lose-lose scenario. The property owners’ land value dropped, and the traffic flow is still not great.
If we are going to widen these streets, we simply can’t do it halfway. Buy all the houses fronting on them, for a more than fair price (just a part of the real cost of the project), so no driveways exist to slow the “precious” flow and cause safety concerns, and make a proper boulevard in the new wider space, with separate bike lanes, paths, trees, public art and parkettes. Use the extra land to infiltrate the stormwater from the paved areas (instead of adding to the sewage overflows) and create a green strip network that connects larger green patches in the city. Do it right, or don’t do it at all.
If we had true parkways as our major arterials, they could function to move more than just cars, and maybe, just maybe enough people would start using bikes, scooters, and buses to never require any more widening, ever. As it is, all we are doing is jamming lanes between houses, which is not good for anyone.
Chebucto was a massive success and so will be Bayers Rd. Good on council….finally making things happen.
Man I hope this gets approved – bayers road is insane! Why do people like to stifle improvements to the city? The main complaint I’m hearing is that transit should be improved instead. Well, that’s great! And transit should be improved! But what’s wrong with improving the road system as well for us who need cars!
An update: 6850 Bayers Road is sold! With an assessed value of $170,400, we can reasonably assume we paid 200k.
I think this is ridiculous, buying homes to widen the road. The road is not the problem, it is the godamn traffic lights the “engineers” put in. Tweak the damn lights before the road (10-20 thousand versus 10-20 million!). The fuck-up they did for the mall, those lights are really what backs traffic up. If those were solid green on Bayers for the rush hours, traffic would flow much better. Better yet would be to get rid of them and get people in down Chebucto/Mumford (should flow nicely since it was “improved” last year). Chebucto could also have been fixed much cheaper, the main improvement was the lights at Mumford and a tweak to allow 2 lanes to turn on Chebucto (the rotary is still backed up to Mumford in the afternoon).