Is this “a moment?” It depends. On what we do next. And the next after that. It has been a stunning week in a shocking month in a stranger-beyond-strange year. And it is only the middle of June. On Tuesday, our city councillors voted 15–1 to overturn a decision they’d made by a vote of […]
Council preview: Uber rules, climate plan, cooling-off period for bureaucrats
Rules for Uber, a plan for climate change, and a cooling-off period for politicians and staff are all on the agenda for Halifax regional council’s meeting this week. The meeting, starting at 10am Tuesday, also includes an appeal hearing for a design review committee decision at 1pm and a public hearing on a Bedford Highway...
Councillor Lindell Smith: Proud of? Not is. Will be proud…
As he begins the second half of his first term as a city councilor, Lindell Smith reflects on what's been accomplished. And what's still to do before he moves on. He is not, he says again/still, a career politician.
What are you most proud of, I asked District 8 Coun. Lindell Smith? He didn’t answer right away. We are seated at a quiet table in Alteregos, the Gottingen Street café he jokingly refers to as his “satellite office.” In fact, Halifax councillors don’t have offices of their own, so this is as close to...
There’s other stuff happening besides cannabis legalization, but also cannabis legalization is happening
Morning File, Tuesday, October 16, 2018
News 1. Kasian Report on VG Redevelopment “Finally, the province has released a massive amount of information from a consulting firm hired to draw up a Master Plan to replace the Victoria General Hospital,” reports Jennifer Henderson: You can read what Kasian Architecture has recommended the proposed new facilities should look like and what services they […]
Cannabis will soon be legal. Just don’t smoke it, or grow it, or enjoy it
Partly out of legitimate health and human considerations, and partly out of a desire not to be seen to be blessing the dangerous idea otherwise ordinary people might occasionally enjoy a toke for the pure recreation of it, governments have been busy regulating and restricting everything about the business — as well as the pleasure — before making it legal.
Talk about buzz kill. At its meeting Tuesday, Halifax city councilors will consider a staff report recommending ever more stringent controls around the cultivation and consumption of cannabis to make sure no one gets the notion there is anything remotely recreational or fun — certainly, definitively not fun— in the air because of the looming legalization...
Council to Armco: “Jump? How high, sir, how high…?” “Good dog…”
Last week, Halifax City Council again/still/always decided to re-re-re-write its planning bylaws on the fly for the greater good and increased profit of a private developer whose books it didn’t bother examining, let alone asking to glimpse once, maybe upside down on the desk, even just in passing...
Last week, Halifax City Council again/still/always decided to re-re-re-write its planning bylaws on the fly for the greater good and increased profit of a private developer whose books it didn’t bother examining, let alone asking to glimpse once, maybe upside down on the desk, even just in passing. Jump? How high, sir, how high?… Good...
United Way poverty report: “the system needs to change”
The irony, the report points out, is that most of those who live in poverty are actually employed, but 28 per cent earn well below a living wage. Their poverty — are you listening, Mr. Premier? — costs the province $1.5–2.2-billion a year.
Halifax’s United Way has done it again. Traditionally, the do-good organization has been best known for turning your $5.4 million in yearly giving into a gamut of good grants to an alphabet soup of good-doing local organizations — from the Adsum Association for Women & Children to the Youth Voices of Nova Scotia Society —...
City council, the developer, and the deal that isn’t quite
APL promises 10 affordable housing units in exchange for being allowed to add five storeys to its Willow Tree project. Who benefits? Hint: not the city...
Halifax City Council can be — even at its best of times — confusing, contradictory, confounding. Last week, council was not, even by its own modest standards, at its best. Councillors were considering again/still/always a proposal from APL, an Armoyan development company, to erect a commercial-residential tower at the corner of Robie Street and Quinpool...
Happy Hermits in Caves Day: Morning File, Thursday, December 15, 2016
News 1. Weather There’s going to be weather today. This is a terrible time for people living on the streets. 2. NSGEU members reject offer Civil servants represented by the NSGEU voted 94 per cent to reject the provincial government’s contract offer. 3. Teachers back at table At 2:21pm yesterday, the province sent out a press release […]