[Image-1] The mild winter must be making us soft. During last year’s frozen hellscape we chiseled grades out of sidewalk ice and wrote the councillors’ names in the snow. But in preparing the 2016 City Council Report Card we can’t help but think it hasn’t been that bad of a year for HRM. The municipality’s […]
city council report card
Posted inNews + Opinion
Cast your vote in our city council report card
[Image-1] 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 […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City Council Report Card 2015
[Image-1] It’s coming up on three years since this colourful coterie of city councillors was elected to govern Halifax, and the cracks are beginning to show. Maybe everyone’s just smelling that fall 2016 election on the horizon, but personalities are finally bubbling up. Any 17 people forced to put up with each other for this […]
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Voices of the city (council)
[Image-1] Early last month we sent a small survey out to Halifax’s 16 councillors and mayor to learn a little bit more about them. It’s an exercise The Coast has offered for a few previous city council report cards, and always proves of tremendous value. After ten months of personally attending council meetings, there are […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Time to vote in our city council report card
[Image-1] Editor: Thanks for all your votes! Results are now being tabulated to be published in our April 2 edition of The Coast. Stay tuned! It’s almost that time of year again. The Coast is getting ready for our annual Halifax city council report card. Our expert judges have been sequestered, and the data is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Jerry Blumenthal, Council newbie
Cell: 237-0720 Grade this year: C Grade last year: N/A Jerry Blumenthal retired after a long career as councillor in both the old city of Halifax and in the HRM, and then came back in 2008 to challenge his replacement, Patrick Murphy. Blumenthal seems to have won the October election thanks in large part to […]
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Dawn Sloane
Cell: 488-4812 Grade this year: B Grade last year: B Dawn Sloane can be unpredictably temperamental, and has a habit of speaking around an issue, sometimes just to hear herself talk, I think. But here’s the thing: She’s a damn good representative to the people in her district. I didn’t learn about this until recently, […]
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Sue Uteck
Cell: 221-7651 Grade this year: C+ Grade last year: B- Sue Uteck forthrightly and unapologetically fights for what she thinks is right. And, she knows the city—she knows where the bodies are buried, who holds the keys to which doors and what makes everything run. That knowledge serves her well, and she uses it effectively. […]
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Jennifer Watts, Council newbie
Cell: 497-4748 Grade this year: B Grade last year: N/A Jennifer Watts hit the ground running, leading the resistance to the Bayers Road widening and putting forward a proposed ban on plastic bottles in city buildings and a range of suggested changes to the HRM By Design planning initiative, all within her first six months […]
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Russell Walker, BIG improvement
Cell: 497-7215 Grade this year: B- Grade last year: C- Russell Walker’s been around forever, and knows what’s what. He’s generally right-of-centre on the issues that The Coast finds important—he’s for a third harbour crossing, he voted for the Chebucto Road widening, he unthinkingly supports huge budget increases for cops, whether warranted or not. But—and […]
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Debbie Hum, MLA Wannabe
Cell: 476-7212 Grade this year: D+ Grade last year: C+ “Debbie Hum,” I wrote last year, “is a likeable councillor, and has a sort of 1970s-style good-government sensibility to her, which is not a bad thing at all, but I wish she’d be more of a presence on council. Mostly, she seems to get into […]
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Steve Streatch, MLA Wannabe
Cell: 497-2995 Grade this year: F Grade last year: F Streatch’s politics aren’t The Coast’s politics: He’s far to the right of anyone else on council, a fact he gleefully reminds us of from time to time. Streatch, I wrote last year, “seems to take pleasure in being on the wrong side of eco-friendly initiatives […]
