City councillors recently received a bump in their pay, and are now receiving just over $77,000 annually. The work load at city council meetings, however, has been slashed to unprecedented lows.
In the four meetings since the October elections, council has dealt with just one significant issue: the Skye Halifax proposal. Otherwise, the collective council agendas lack depth: over four meetings council approved building a break water in Cow Bay, made minor technical adjustments in a union agreement, reviewed a couple of insignificant staff reports, approved a staff plan for energy retrofits in some city buildings, made some council appointments to committee, complained about Heritage Gas tearing up streets, allocated the hotel bed tax to festivals, and gave a developer more time to get started on a project.
Compare that to just one council meeting from November of last year, when council held a public hearing on quonset huts in the suburbs, worked out the details of banking and credit card services for the city, approved a tender to fix the seawall on the Northwest Arm, made a set of zoning changes in Bedford, OKed the lease for a Timmy’s in the ferry terminal, extended city water to a mobile home park in Sackville, started the planning process for recapitialization of rec centres, looked at the harbour water cooling of Alderney Landing and requested three separate staff reports on various issues.
To be fair, the bulk of councillors’ work doesn’t take place at council meetings, but consists of committee meetings, reading voluminous reports and, critically, responding to constituents. But the weekly meeting is the most public work of council. The entire city can watch council on TV or in person, as councillors divvy up tax money and make the decisions that determine the future of the city. Until recently, council was rightly the ultimate authority in city government.
The slash in workload appears to be the result of the “agenda forecasting” system that CAO Richard Butts implemented late last year. As we reported in February, the goal was to flag and limit politically sensitive issues that might otherwise work their way up to council level, and to move much of the decision making out of the hands of elected politicians to the control of unelected bureaucrats in city hall. The swearing in of the new council seems to have accelerated the change.
New mayor Mike Savage, however, rejects that characterization.”We can be more involved in doing our jobs if there’s less council meetings,” says Savage. “Everything that has come up to be discussed has been discussed. Perhaps we’re dealing with it a little bit less acrimoniously.”
Let’s compare the meeting agendas from the four meeting since the new council was sworn in, with four meeting agendas from the same period last year:
This year’s meetings
November 13
• building a break water along Cow Bay road
• minor adjustment to wording of transit agreement
• a couple of unimportant staff reports
November 20
• Skye Halifax
• Council appointments to committee
• A general complaining session about Heritage gas tearing up streets
• Festival funding from the hotel tax
November 27
• OKed some energy efficiency projects
• Created new community councils
• More committee appointments
• Gave a developer more time to start construction
December 4
• Made more committee apointments
Last year’s meetings
November 8
• Public hearing on Quonset Huts
• New agreement for banking & credit card services for the city
• Tender to fix the seawall on the Northwest Arm
• Approved a set of zoning changes in Bedford
• Approved a lease agreement for Tim Hortons in the ferry terminal
• Extended city water to a mobile home park in Sackville
• Started the planning process for recapitalization of rec facilities
• Had a staff presentation on energy program at Alderney Landing
• three requests for staff reports on various issues
November 15
• Public hearing on Halifax West high school site development
• Bought four fire trucks
• OKed the fundraising campaign for the new library
• Discussed and OKed a half a million dollar expenditure for new artificial turf at a Sackville soccer field.
• Long discussion and approval of a transit E-pass pilot project for city employees
• Closed session on legal issues around the Occupy eviction
November 22
• Request for banners on Main Street, Dartmouth
• Dealt with unsolicited request to lease the old Fall River rec centre
• Finalized E-Pass pilot project
• FIrst reading of bylaw change to allow property tax-funding for paving project in Sandy Lake area
• OKed two heritage designations
• Festival funding from the hotel tax
• Closed session about selling the city’s soul for Oval naming rights
December 6
• Long debate and then vote to approve the second stage of the stadium analysis
• agreed to sewer extension through Via Rail property
• zoning variance in Cow Bay
• Tweaked granting process
• Update on affordable housing functional plan
• Reviewed the province’s coastal protection plans
* great hilarity to ensue as mayor Peter Kelly pinky promises a new era of open window democracy
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2012.
do you not think staff organized it this way to ensure new councillors and the mayor were not overwhelmed their first couple of meetings?
last year they were all seasoned veterans and the chances that we would have a lot of newbies after the election were high. the process for adding items to the agenda is a long one so I would expect things to speed up now that they’re on a roll.
wasn’t there only one new mayor and 2 new councillors elected?
Tim, sometimes I appreciate your jouralistic digging, and sometimes I just think you’re grasping at straws on conspiracies that just aren’t there. This time it’s the latter. I work with another municipality and I can tell you that it’s the exact same situation here. Like funnygirl said, with the elections you need to bring new councillors up to speed and not overwhelm them too much. Then with the holidays it’s not an ideal time to be getting into big issues because important staff might have time off and because the public often doesn’t ahve the time to attend public meetings and such. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.
This article is absolutely hilarious. The list for this years meetings lumps together groups of actions into one statement while the the list for last years meetings describes individual activities one by one. What can you expect though, The Coast always needs something to hate…
And they didn’t even deal with the Skye issue. They just proclaimed there wouldn’t be any debate or discussion and quashed it. Democracy, Mike savage style.
I’ll also add that while yes, Council ended up being mostly vets, what’s going to be on the agenda is often put into motion weeks or months before. I.e. you plan completion of staff reports based on a future agenda, and those reports also usually have to be in to the admin staff with a good leeway for them to put the agenda together. So while Council may not be that new… decisions about the agenda were probably being made during the election when there were no guarantees that the whole of Council wouldn’t be newbies.
Wait until the Son of Savagebeest digs his claws into the treasury to fund all his Lib programs.
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