If you’ve never looked at District 13 on a map and have only been paying attention to municipal politics since the summer of last year, you might have the impression that District 13 consists of Upper Tantallon and Hubbards and that’s pretty much it.
But in reality, District 13 is a massive coastal district, and boasts the quintessential coastal tourism spot, Peggy’s Cove. This district, like its large rural and coastal siblings District 2 and 11, will be the focus of intense scrutiny and problem solving as the city works on coastal protection and reforming rural communities in the next council term.
The tension in District 13 (and most of HRM’s rural communities) is the fact that residents in rural parts of the city pay a similar tax rate to urban residents, but the difference in services they get for those taxes is stark. Rural communities pay similar property taxes to urban residents, but their firefighters and recreation centre workers are volunteers making it feel very unfair to be taxed so heavily for services provided by volunteers.
That fact, juxtaposed with another, is the main tension in rural communities. Because while it is true that rural communities pay a lot in taxes for not a lot in services, it is also true that the services rural communities get are heavily subsidized by the property taxes of some of Halifax’s poorest, but denser, communities. So the tension is this: if we’re talking about tax fairness, rural communities should actually be paying more in taxes for the inadequate services they currently get.
But doing that would be unpopular and also be a pretty dumb way to correct the fiscal issues of rural HRM. So instead of jacking up taxes to pay for roads and maintain volunteer municipal services, the city is planning on doing the much smarter thing and fixing the underlying unsustainability of rural communities. To find out which candidate is up to the challenge of fixing the unsustainability of Canada’s Ocean Playground, The Coast sent out an extensive questionnaire to see what each candidate knows about the issues facing the city ahead of the municipal election on Oct. 19. The Coast followed up with more detailed questions to test each candidate’s policy chops.
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And we’ll start with the first of the two candidates who filled out The Coast’s questionnaire.
Nancy Hartling
The first person to fill out the questionnaire in District 13, and the second person to fill out the questionnaire overall, is District 13’s Nancy Hartling. Her answers to The Coast’s questionnaire demonstrated a rurally strong (pun intended) and strong overall understanding of the issues facing the HRM. In her answer to why the budget will be extra crunched this year, she highlighted the inequity built into rural taxation. She said that suburbs were expensive (true) and then continued “that the rural (and not suburban) communities of District 13 (Prospect, Peggy’s Cove, Hacketts Cove, St. Margarets Bay, Hubbards—the entire stretch of the 333 Hwy—also known as the Lighthouse Route), will be paying the same tax rate as suburban communities in the 2024/2025 budget.” She then cited her sources (this is a tax rate map for the visually inclined) and then she continued “and they are getting none of the services that are afforded to their suburban or urban counterparts.” Which is the tension, outlined in the intro.
With a good understanding of the issues, the question then becomes what does Hartling want to do with the municipal powers the province has granted council? In a follow up interview turned in depth policy discussion about rural issues in the HRM, Hartling demonstrated strong policy chops and an ability to think through consequences—intended or otherwise—of a wide range of policies. Ever since the 2008 fire in Porter’s Lake revealed the fact that rural exurbs are a bit of a death trap, things like fire safety and emergency egress have been a pretty hot topic in the rural parts of the HRM. The ideal solution to the emergency egress problem is to build more of them, but if the residents of Porter’s Lake have been waiting 16 years for their emergency exits, it’s likely that Upper Tantallon will have to wait a bit too. A lot of rural communities already have secondary exits that are regularly used in ATV trails, a good way to help evacuation efforts would be to allow people to evacuate using their trails. A good way to evaluate a candidate is to ask them to think through the implications of this policy proposal.
Hartling thought through the pros, like the fact that it’s something the city could implement right now with a little bit of organization. And the cons, like people travelling through the woods pretty close to an out of control wild fire. She measured the risks and judged that the benefits of quick evacuation probably outweighed the risks of the method of evacuation. For those who need a sports metaphor for what this paragraph is saying, this is like having a defender who knows when to pinch and when to back away.
During the interview Hartling demonstrated strong policy chops in other parts of the rural file from recreation to transportation to the implementation of Fire Smart in the HRM.
Nancy Hartling’s website can be found here:
Markus Critchley
The second person to answer the questionnaire in District 13 (eighth overall) Markus Critchley, union man, had one of the most unique answers to the ‘why is the city facing a budget crunch’ question. He wrote that “The Auditor General’s 2022 audit on the ’management of respectful workplaces’, identified several gaps in the handling of workplace complaints, and suggested this may be contributing to retention throughout municipal departments.” Critchley is not the first candidate to mention the cost of labour as a budget pressure, but most tend to say management in the HRM is bloated and leave it at that. Critchley pointed out that people don’t tend to quit jobs they hate, they quit bosses they hate, and that AG report about respectful workplaces says things like “HRM has a strategic initiative to enhance workplace culture. However, management has not defined what this means or how they will get there. Respect in the workplace could continue to be an issue if management does not monitor whether programs and initiatives to improve workplace culture have been effective.” Or translated to English, employees in the HRM have no real way to protect themselves from bad bosses. This in turn leads people to quit. Or it might not, the Office of the Auditor General also found that HRM didn’t bother to find out why people were leaving. But they really should, because having people leave for preventable reasons is crazy expensive.
In the most recent follow up report from March of this year the HRM has completed only 33% of the recommendations. To the city’s credit, CAO Cathie O’Toole asked for (and council voted to approve) mandatory semi-annual updates on the AG’s recommendations to hold the bureaucracy accountable. The city’s management and director class is undergoing some pretty substantial organizational changes, which are dangerously close to competent good governance. Seems like it might be a good idea to have a voice on council who’s used to thinking about workers as the city reorganizes its workforce.
And in a follow up interview with The Coast, Critchley demonstrated a good understanding of the rest of the issues facing the HRM, and rural communities, especially in the realm of rural transportation.
Markus Critchley has no website listed, but his contact info can be found here.
Robert Holden
Robert Holden is a residential painter and former bus driver. He responded to our survey well after the deadline, but The Coast’s Brendyn Creamer has provided this summary of his answers.
Holden’s take on the city’s worsening budget issues is that the budget should be spent more equitably throughout HRM. Having run in the last municipal election as a candidate focused on public transit in rural areas, he once again argued that more needs to be done in this area. His understanding of the Infrastructure Asset Management Administrative Order was simple yet clear, but his answers show he is knowledgeable about the regional plan. He also focuses on population growth quite a bit—an issue he expects will see taxes go up as the city attempts to build better infrastructure to accommodate more people.
However, Holden took issue with the Housing Accelerator Fund bylaws requiring four residential units per lot, stating it would “change the character of neighbourhoods.” He also takes issue with the “mass immigration strategy”—supposedly referring to the province’s plan to bring in more and more people. This is a provincial issue through and through, but Holden is right in thinking this does affect municipal infrastructure and the city’s housing supply, but instead of providing ways of accommodating that, he says the “mass immigration strategy needs to be addressed.”
While his stance on transportation is admirable, especially his discussion around the Integrated Mobility Plan not addressing rural transit, as well as advocating for better working conditions for those working in public transit, his answers on the housing crisis, infrastructure and homelessness were barebones and leave a lot to be desired.
Robert Holden’s contact information can be found here.
Michael A. Marriott
Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Michael A. Marriot’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.
Michael A. Marriott’s contact information can be found here.
Dustin O’Leary
Dustin O’Leary is a communications manager with the Atlantic Gold Corporation. He responded to our survey well after the deadline, but The Coast’s Brendyn Creamer has provided this summary of his answers.
O’Leary showed an adequate understanding of municipal processes and issues, such as the Infrastructure Asset Management Administrative Order and changes being made to the regional plan review. When asked about what proposals he would change about the plan, O’Leary said areas in HRM that are continually growing, such as his district, would receive far fewer municipal services than areas identified as urban or suburban. He specifically noted concerns with groundwater, pressures on traffic, and the lack of effective transit options. This concern did bleed into his discussion on housing, stating that identified growth areas could experience further degradation of transportation and transit services if development to curb the housing shortage didn’t consider traffic. On affordable housing, he said he’d like to see it clearly defined in the suburban plan, while also adding that rapid transit and supporting walkable neighbourhoods are both good ideas.
However, he did take an issue with cyclists, stating that despite all of the bike lanes, they continue to use arterial roads “designed for vehicular traffic.” O’Leary recognized the collaboration that would have to take place between the province and the municipality to curb the housing shortage and help the unhoused population, though he didn’t go further than say that the issue was “challenging”. He also didn’t provide sufficient answers on police reform, all but stating that he agrees with the “methodical approach that HRM has undertaken to address this issue.” His primary goal is to set up supports that weren’t available during the Tantallon wildfires, such as installing more hydrants and pump houses, wanting to action these items before the completion of the multi-year study in progress.
Dustin O’Leary’s website can be found here: better13.ca
Dawn Edith Penney
Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Dawn Edith Penney’s potential as a councillor, please ask her to complete the questionnaire.
Dawn Edith Penney’s website can be found here: http://facebook.com/votedawnpenney
John Profit
Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess John Profit’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.
John Profit’s website can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/john.profit.5
Analysis
The residents of District 13 can feel good about knowing at least two of their candidates are strong all around candidates and very strong in some additional policy niches. Due to Critchley’s union background he may have an advantage in organizing (read: getting volunteers for his campaign) and as a result would be a slight favourite with the bookies. If gambling on municipal politics was a thing like it is in the states.
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This article appears in Oct 1 – Nov 6, 2024.
I’m wondering about this argument: “while it is true that rural communities pay a lot in taxes for not a lot in services, it is also true that the services rural communities get are heavily subsidized by the property taxes of some of Halifax’s poorest, but denser, communities. So the tension is this: if we’re talking about tax fairness, rural communities should actually be paying more in taxes for the inadequate services they currently get.”
The story to which you link as support for this argument discusses the subsidization of Glen Arbour by Fairview; that seems a rather selective example. Certainly Glen Arbour does not reflect the realities in all of District 13. Many communities in this District, such as those along Prospect Road/Highway 333, are neither serviced well by HRM, nor are they high-income communities. There are many low-income people in my neighbourhood, our primary road is a provincial highway, and my understanding is that maintenance and snow removal are paid for by the province, not the city. Yet we pay pretty hefty property taxes to HRM. HRM provides us with garbage removal, I suppose, but even there, we don’t get the same level of service as those in other areas of HRM. Does your argument hold if we compare Terence Bay or Goodwood to, say, the South End of Halifax? Are those in the South End subsidizing the services those Prospect Communities get? Or is it the other way around? There’s a massive development planned for the top of Prospect Road that will make life and commutes harder for everyone who lives here, with still no guarantees of any extension of Halifax Transit to these communities. (We are the much-maligned plebs-in-cars who don’t have any buses to catch in our neighbourhood, and who now have been banned from turning off clogged commuter arteries to get to work and school, so as to keep the hoi polloi off the pretty tree-lined streets of the South End’s wealthy yuppies). The top two candidates for mayor are Peninsula Boys who have seemed pretty uninterested in the policy issues affecting communities outside the core until very, very recently; it must have just dawned on them that not everyone who gets to vote can afford to buy or rent a home in the South or West End of the peninsula, and not all of us can manage to bike to work like their constituents (unless we’re triathletes in our 20s, perhaps). I’m sure you’re right that some working class folk are subsidizing the well-to-do in Halifax with their property taxes, but I wonder if it’s always those in urban neighbourhoods who are the subsidizers. It would be interesting to check the average incomes, property values, and service levels of those paying property taxes on the peninsula versus, say, of those living in rural areas with no transit, like mine. My area doesn’t get a lot of representation in this city (or in the Coast for that matter), but I really hope that changes in this election. I intend to vote for one of the two candidates for District 13 who answered your survey; they both seem like good, dedicated people who might actually represent our concerns.
And thank you for covering my District in this story!
Agreed! Not only do we rural taxpayers subsidize wealthy neighborhoods who consistently receive all the municipal goodies, but the so-called city leaders use our rural tax dollars to make it even more challenging for commuters (under the guise of “traffic calming” or for the expansion of barely used green initiatives) to even get onto the peninsula. City councilors, here’s a news flash, we commute to the city for work, and school. That’s it! We don’t go for leisure. Frankly, having lived elsewhere, I will add that Halifax is a second-rate Canadian city at best. Internationally, it’s never going to make any list of great world cities. Obviously, for me and my family there is nothing that compels us to visit more than we have to and I suspect most others living off the peninsula commute for work, school or healthcare and that’s pretty much it. Why the city employs such obstructionist policies and practices seriously affecting the quality of life for so many people exemplifies their disdain for rural residents of HRM. They do love our tax dollars, however!