If you love something, set it free and maybe it’ll come back as a cool app. So hopes city council, which today will give first reading to a proposed administrative order designed to release multitudes of imprisoned data from within the city’s towering servers. It’ll mean Halifax will finally formalize an “Open Data” program which […]
Secrecy
Posted inArts + Music
Frank Warren’s secret life
Once the domain of diaries, trusted friends and closets full of skeletons, secrets found a new outlet in 2005, when Frank Warren launched the website PostSecret.com. Since then, PostSecret has collected secrets—written on postcards and mailed anonymously to Warren’s home in Germantown, Maryland—and posted them online. To date, Warren has received over a half-million cards, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Council’s secret “public meeting” on tax reform
Today, Halifax council met for a “workshop” on so-called “tax reform,” a proposal to jettison the time-honoured system of assessment-based property taxes and replace it with a fee-for-services system. When the workshop was discussed by council last month, assurances were given that it would be open to the public. And it was, nominally. Only problem […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How councillors voted on making appointments in public
Here’s how Halifax councillors voted on Linda Mosher’s motion which would have changed council policy such that appointments would be made in public: Adams: Yes Barkhouse: No Blumenthal: No Dalrymple: No Fisher: Yes Harvey: No Hendsbee: No Hum: Absent johns: No Karsten: No Kelly: Yes Lund: No McCluskey: Yes Mosher: Yes Nicoll: Yes Outhit: No […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Council sticks to secret appointments
At Halifax council’s Tuesday meeting, councillor Linda Mosher brought forward a proposal to change existing policy, such that in the future all council appointments to boards and commissions are made in public. Supporters of the status quo maintained that holding council discussion of applicants’ qualifications in public would be an invasion of those applicants’ privacy. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Province lowers access to information fees
The province Friday announced it is lowering the application fee for Freedom of Information Act requests from $25 to $5, thereby matching the fee for federal access to information requests. Until now, Nova Scotia had among the highest fees in North America. The high fee was a barrier for many people needing to access their […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City buys Bayers Road property in preparation for future widening
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 […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
BREAKING NEWS: Sewer report update
I’ll repost below a press release issued by HRM. I’ll note that the title of the release, “Joint Session Receives Positive Update on the Halifax Wastewater Treatment Facility” is a seriously pathetic attempt to spin the sewage disaster into “positive” news. Also, I assume the gist of this is that they’re not releasing the report. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Council mired in secrecy argument
Halifax council today is meeting behind closed doors to discuss the forensic audit detailing the cause(s) of the Halifax sewage plant failure. Until now, the audit has been kept from council (see Peter Kelly wears the sewage disaster), and it continues to be kept from the public. Today’s meeting began at 9;30am, and as of […]