When metro’s four municipalities merged in 1996, one of the crucial public-safety issues city hall officials grappled with was the duplication of street names. There was a long list of them. There still is. Emergency crews during metro’s infancy needed to know exactly where they were going when a call for help was made. Temporary […]
City Hall
Posted inNews + Opinion
An anaerobic exercise for Halifax’s compost system
Halifax’s biggest university could end up powered by the city’s rotting food scraps. The municipality is looking for a new and improved composting operation, and the possibility it will include an anaerobic digestion system has industry stakeholders excited. The municipality’s current compost system is over-capacity and doesn’t comply with the latest guidelines set by the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A letter to Sam Austin, about downtown Dartmouth
Dartmouth Centre councillor Sam Austin sent a letter to The Coast earlier this week in response to writer Melissa Buote’s review of Picnic on March 9. Austin took issue with Buote’s comparison of downtown Dartmouth at night to the old horror movie The Haunting, saying it was an “attempt at a clever analogy taken too […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax CAO off work dealing with “personal issue”
Halifax’s chief administrative officer is missing from City Hall, and the reason why might be related to a confidential motion passed earlier this week by city council. Jacques Dubé has been “out of the office dealing with a personal issue” for the past two weeks according to HRM spokesperson Brendan Elliott, and that’s basically everything […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Looks like no one showed up to the Halifax M103 protest
A national organization opposing Motion 103 and calling for a “Canadian government for Canadians” held rallies across the country today, including in Halifax. Police separated M103 protesters and counter-protesters at larger rallies in Toronto and Calgary, but if the event’s Facebook page is to be believed, not many people showed up locally. Only four people […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Street checks and balances
Do you trust the police? The Board of Police Commissioners would like to know. “You have to be open,” says BPC chair and deputy mayor Steve Craig. “You have to hear what’s being said and take that all in, whether you like what’s being said or not.” The Halifax police department’s civilian overseers are quietly […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City council gets 3.4 percent pay raise
It’s a little bit more than a living wage. Salary numbers for Halifax Regional Council have finally been calculated and most of the municipality’s elected officials received a modest 3.4 percent pay raise this year. Councillors will see their pay increase from $82,653 to $85,443. The deputy mayor’s salary has likewise increased from $90,918 to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Reason and rhyme: meet Rebecca Thomas, Halifax’s poet laureate
The first time you hear Rebecca Thomas perform her spoken word poetry, something will happen to you. Your mind will calm as the tide of her voice takes over, the conviction of her words buoying you up until she reaches the ultimate, perfectly crafted finale and her perspective crashes down, challenging you in one hand […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Ridiculous development approved out of spite
[Image-1] “We see petitions on a number of occasions. If we listened or agreed with petitions then there’d never be a convention centre.”—councilor Stephen Adams “Hand gestures are OK as long as you use all fingers.” —mayor Mike Savage “It doesn’t meet any of our design guidelines, guys. It doesn’t meet ANY of our design […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A tale of two convention centres
The Globe and Mail published this Animated view of Halifax’s Nova Centre yesterday with its story about the convention centre. Unlike the video, the story looked at the pros and cons of the centre, including developer Wolfgang Thiel’s issue: Thiel Group took the Nova Scotia government to court last year arguing that the Nova Centre’s […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Peter Kelly moves to Alberta for work
[Image-1] The booming Albertan job market has taken another of Nova Scotia’s sons from its undulating bosom. The bright lights, big money of Westlock County has proven too good an opportunity to pass up for ex-mayor Peter Kelly. As published in the Westlock News, the award-winning weekly Westlock newspaper (which also serves the village of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Khyber Art Society names new artistic director
[Image-1] Even with all the recent news about their former home, the Khyber Art Society itself has been relatively quiet lately. That’s likely due to the difficult task of finding a replacement artistic director after the recent departure of Daniel Joyce for greener pastures. Today, the Khyber’s board announced that out of 20 applicants and […]