The Coast's city hall podcast, hosted by reporter Matt Stickland. An irreverent look at city hall, the policies they put forward and the people who decide on them for us.
Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman
I suspect most people don't usually read the show notes, but if you're here for the study, scroll down. If you're here for information in this episode Matt Stickland, recaps council and goes deep into the weeds of Halifax's Bus Rapid Transit Plan. Here's the promised study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920919314026?via%3Dihub
Bit of a light week at city hall and since I forgot it was Good Friday, a bit of a lighter episode. Councillor Janet Steele is trying to get the city to protect and create more heritage districts. Councillor Cathy Deagle Gammon is trying to remove parking spots in land use bylaws because toddlers don't drive cars. All of that and a deep dive into the difference between Halifax's transportation planning and that of the Dutch. Here's a link to the YouTube video referenced in the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpo98dhpgZI&t=2s Please consider becoming a paid subscriber over at www.grandparade.news.
Last week was a relatively slow one as far as the schedule was concerned, with only a Tuesday council meeting and Thursday's African descent advisory committee. Halifax now has a budget, and thanks to Mayor Andy Fillmore, next year's budget will be wildly different from this year's. Also, last week, Halifax once again found itself standing in the long shadow of its more than slightly racist history.
In a week dominated by breathless international news Halifax's city hall had a relatively slow week. This week there were only two meetings of consequence, which allowed the Board of Police Commissioners to do a deep dive into intimate partner violence and the Envrionment and Sustainability Committee to learn about the failures of the green network plan.
Now that budget season is done, as threatened, this show will now become a weekly roundup of what happened at City Hall last week. The obvious high/lowlight of last week was when council finished the budget adjustment list debates on Wednesday, March 26, but did you know that other meetings also happened last week? There was an audit that missed some key financial information, public housing grants were awarded, and next summer, there might be a bus to HRM's beaches! This weekly recap show takes a whirlwind rip through all of council's meetings (except budget committee) from the past week.
Halifax's budget playoffs wrapped on Wednesday March 26 and Halifax has a budget! The budget itself was a political victory for our new mayor, Andy Fillmore, who promised to keep Halifax's property tax rate flat, which the council did. However, property values went up by 4.7 percent, and so will property taxes. Those property taxes will pay for Halifax's $1.3 billion operating budget and $318 million. Thanks to the final debate day in Halifax's budget playoffs, we learned more about our new council's politics than we did about the budget. The city doesn't care for its workers, but it does care for its sports heroes and biodiversity. Some rookie councillors showed some expected inexperience, and a veteran councillor earned their first wooden spoon.
Halifax council's budget meeting on monday March 24th was a stinker, quite literally, and also because council almost voted to make Halifax's poorest people just a little hungrier because of how Canadian governments divvied up their power and responsibilities. But the good news is that your odds of dying in a fire are going to decrease slightly in the next few years, probably. Still, the bad news is that your taxes in five years are going to be astronomically expensive. You're not going to get better programs and services for those crazy high taxes because that money will have to go to debt because this council just can't stop themselves from making terrible fiscal decisions.
It's the second intermission of the budget playoffs and a lot happened in Friday's debate. Council approved an armoured personnel carrier, the central library got it's reserves cut and council avoided making a terrible cut. All that and more in this budget playoffs' second intermission update!
In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt flys solo to update folks on the future of the podcast and the future of Halifax's budget.
The wait is over, it's finally here budget season started on Wednesday. In this episode Matt and Martin dive into what's being going on at city hall from strategic plans, to Windsor street exchange and of course, the start of budget season.
This past week has been a huge one in municipal politics with Halifax's city council getting an update about how their strategic planning is going. Spoiler alert, it's going very bad. In this emergency episode, Matt and Martin break down the failures of Halifax's bureaucracy
It's been a busy start to the new year with with a few big ticket events for the hosts Matt Stickland and Martin Baumen to break down. The Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, December 8th, was one of the best meetings in HRM's recent history, which included five little piggies and some light-hearted civil disobedience. Matt's been doing a lot of research into road safety and tells Martin all about how much liability the city might have been putting itself in for the past few decades. Also, in this episode, a Grand Parade exclusive: Did Andy Fillmore think he would win the vote to de-designate encampments? And a debute of our new segment, Question Period.
In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt and Martin look back at the past two weeks in municipal politics and answer some hard hitting questions like: Will transit ever get better in this city? How do you cook a crow? And is there any point to the city's advisory committees? Plus, we also have a new show format! Except for the any other business segment at the end your listening experience should be largely unchanged but we'd like any feedback if you have any. Please send it to matt@thecoast.ca
At long last Coast reporter Martin is back after his paternity leave and he joins Coast city hall reporter Matt Stickland to catch up on everything he'd missed since being out. In this episode, the two talk about how the council is shaping up three meetings into their term. Which councillors are making mistakes? Who's looking promising? The conversation then turns to the HRM's committees and the upcoming budget season. Matt explains why he's mostly optimistic about the city's future, even if some shakey debate performances have sown some early seeds of doubt. All of that plus traffic planning, boomer assumptions and sneaky good provincial legislation in this first episode of Season 2 of the Grand Parade
After an impromptu summer break the Grand Parade is back! Host Matt Stickland sits down with the owner of Atlantic New Chris Greene to talk about how to interview candidates for the upcoming fall election. Chris will be sitting down the candidates of District 7 to interview them and find out who would be the best candidate for his district and wanted to advice. Happy to oblige, Matt explains how he and The Coast are vetting candidates for the fall election.
In what was supposed to be the last episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election podcast series The Coast's city hall reporter Matt Stickland sat down with The Coast's newsletter editor Julie Lawrence to answer some listener questions. The conversation bounces around as the two try to answer as many questions as possible. There are a bunch of simple questions like “Does Halifax have enough parking?” that have relatively simple answers like “Yes.” But some questions sparked more interesting and nuanced conversations, like ‘Should Halifax reduce the size of its bureaucracy?' and ‘What makes a suburb?' There is also a definitely real award given out to the listener who asked the best question. But this will not be the last episode in the series, I heard back from the infrastructure expert I was trying to interview, and we're in the process of setting up the interview. So stay tuned for that in your podcast feeds.
There are two types of people in this world. There are people who think that headline is needlessly dramatic, and then there are people who understand risk management. The Coast has covered risk management extensively since Halifax's Auditor General released his scathing indictments of the city's Risk Management Team, but this is one of those things that just can't be talked about enough until the issues are fixed. In this episode of the Grand Parade, Matt talks through his research to date from a 2014 Halifax Transit oil spill to today. The conversation covers the big things like Halifax's risk management team being the wrong people for the job to the minutia, like taxing under-utilized parking lots near transit terminals. The long and short of it is that this city is not taking Risk Management seriously, and your future is in jeopardy in the most boring possible way. The next crop of councillors needs to do a better job of addressing these risks, which means we need to do a better job of vetting them when they come to our doors. This, unfortunately, requires you to consume the civic education version of your least favourite vegetable and gain a baseline understanding of what risk management is and how it affects your life. You can do this by listening to the latest episode of the Grand Parade here.
In this penultimate episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election explainer series, Matt interviews Risk Management expert Bruce Manion. This episode is a direct result of Halifax's Auditor General's recent audits in which he found the HRM's risk management framework to be a bit of a hot mess. In this episode, Bruce explains to Matt how the city should be thinking about Risk Management and the problem with the city moving its risk management team from the accountants to the lawyers back in 2021. This conversation moves around a lot, from crashing ships to various levels of government approving the building of death trap subdivisions. This conversation also launched Matt into the rabbit hole of the municipal Enterprise Risk Register, and it looks like how the city identifies risks in the first place is fundamentally flawed. More on this when Matt finishes reporting it out, but subscribers of The Coast will get a little preview of what Matt is investigating in City Hall Insider, which hits inboxes at 10:30 on Monday mornings.
The HFX Votes 2024 series is in the process of wrapping up, with three episodes recorded yesterday to be released over the next few days. Up first is an interview with Céo Gaudet, a former member of the Regional Watersheds Advisory Board. For a little bit of history, the RWAB had a predecessor, the Dartmouth Lakes Advisory Board, which started in the 1970s. At the time, there was a lot of development going on and very few, if any, environmental assessments of procedures. But what was noticeable was the increase in silt in Dartmouth Lakes. So, the city of Dartmouth helped form this board, which was filled out with scientific, environmental, and local experts and organizations. Once formed, the board advised Dartmouth's city council and the city of Dartmouth listened. In the intervening years, the city has professionalized its bureaucracy and added some in-house environmental assessments to the development agreement process. This led to the city trying to disband the RWAB last council term, but councillors voted to keep it because they deemed independent oversight as important. Now, thanks to some provincial legislation, the RWAB is gone for good. In this episode, Matt and Céo take a deep dive into what the city of Halifax has lost in losing its independent environmental oversight. Just an administrative note: We got sidetracked, so Ceo never finished explaining the issues with blue-green algae. When plants and/or blue-green algae die, they fall to the bottom and decompose. That takes up a lot of oxygen and makes the lake anoxic, which kills other lake life, like the eels mentioned.
In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt Stickland sits down with Wes Marshall, the author of Killed by a Traffic Engineer. His book is a meta analysis of traffic engineering studies, and he tells Matt how to determine if Halifax's traffic engineers are doing a good job. Just one note: In the episode Matt says that the HRM has made it's traffic impact statements better, and Wes points out that if they were an improvement they would consider safety. The good news is that the new traffic impact statements consider non-car modes of travel, but only consider safety in the context of car on car collisions. Not driver vs pedestrian. There's still a long way to go before Halifax's traffic impact statements are good, even if they are slightly improved from 2017
In this edition of HFX Votes 2024 I sit down with two of the authors of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report: Building Inclusive Communities: A Policy Agenda for Nova Scotia Municipalities that Leaves No One Behind. In this conversation, Christine Saulnier the CCPA's Nova Scotia director, explains how the city could save a lot of money by bringing services, like snow clearing, in-house. She also explains how the way we do snow removal might be a little bit sexist. The other other, Kyle Buott, gives some practical solutions to the city. Did you know there's a way the city could make more revenue *and* get Canadian National Railway to let us use their tracks for light rail? Two administrative notes: First, in the episode I say that the land lord registry is coming into effect, that's not true, it's been in effect since April 1, 2024. And second, you may notice that citation 169 has me as an author, please calibrate your critical thinking appropriately.
In this episode of the Grand Parade's ongoing series of municipal issues explainer, I sit down with mayor Mike Savage to find out what the mayor does. This conversation bounces around from the fiscal challenges facing the city, some practical advice for running a good meeting and an answer to the question: Does Mike find it weird that people call him "Your Worship?"
In part 2 of the HFX Votes 2024 episode on property taxes I sat down with Darrell Dexter, the former premier of Nova Scotia to ask him about why we have a property tax cap in the first place. This conversation went off the rails almost immediately in the best possible way. Dexter explains that the property tax cap is doing its job, protecting people from being gouged by the market. Dexter makes the case that if a city needs money then it's incumbent on councillors to use the other tools at their disposal to make their budget make sense. As part of this discussion, Dexter also talked about the philosophy behind policy-making and how to anticipate outcomes. After thinking about this conversation over the Canada Day weekend there I have my first question for The Coast's I now have that will continue to inform my municipal coverage: If the city needs money, which we do, if you (candidate) want to freeze or lower property taxes, then what revenue tools will you be using to cover the shortfall of lowered or frozen taxes?
The Coast's municipal election podcast explainers continue with a deep dive into property taxes and the property tax cap. In this episode, Matt sits down with local economist Deny Sullivan to ask him some questions like: What is the property tax cap? How does it work? Is our council penny-wise and pound-foolish? The two get sidetracked a little bit when the conversation veers into the new road safety framework and how it demonstrates a lack of fiscal responsibility by the city. Deny explains his property taxation philosophy and how council could be doing more to fix city finances while also getting housing built in a housing crisis. As it turns out, keeping our capped property taxes low benefits land lords a lot, and doesn't really help anyone else. Sure homeowners save a little bit a tax time, but it costs us way more in the long term when the city can't afford to build for a better future. The two also spend some time coming up with some potential property tax fixes to afford the better world we want. Do you still have questions you want Matt to look into? Send them to hfxvotes2024@thecoast.ca.
In this week's episode, The Coast's Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss HRM staff's eyebrow-raising plans for redesigning the Windsor Street Exchange while making transit worse, plus how councillors aren't using the powers they have at their disposal. Also, if you have any issues you want Matt to look into for the upcoming municipal election please email them to hfxvotes2024@thecoast.ca
In part two of the Halifax Votes Transit episode Matt sits down with Reece Martin of RM Transit to help explain some of the choices Halifax Transit is making. For example, in yesterday's episode It's More Than Busses' Douglas Wetmore proposed that Halifax Transit would be better served by switching to a headway bus service instead of a scheduled one. Reece Martin explains why a transit service would want to use headway, and also what a headway is. For everything you ever needed to know about transit for the upcoming municipal election, here's HFX Votes 2024: How to fix Halifax Transit
In this edition of HFX Votes 2024, The Coast's special municipal election coverage, Matt sits down with Douglas Wetmore of It's More than Busses. In part one of a two-part series Matt finds out what exactly's going wrong with Halifax's beleaguered bus system. Wetmore explains the issues facing transit, some of the issues created by Halifax Transit, and some potential fixes. It's everything you need to know about why your bus is late. In part two which will be out later this week. Matt will sit down with an expert to find out what transit would look like if it were well run. Between these two episodes, you should have everything you need to know to ask your candidates about transit.
In this episode Matt Stickland sat down with the CEO of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, Paul MacKinnon in what is the first in a series of explainers leading up to the municipal election. MacKinnon is a guy who knows what a downtown needs to succeed. We talk about the challenges of making unpopular decisions and how downtowns make money for the city. MacKinnon also tells me about the new plan for downtown that his organization came up with: Vision 2030.
In this week's episode, The Coast's Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss HRM council's unanimous passing of federally-prompted zoning reforms and how that will shape the city to come. Plus, Halifax has an emergency response… emergency… and the region's transportation plans still don't make sense.
In this week's episode of The Grand Parade podcast, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman chat with economist Deny Sullivan about Halifax's HAF blunders and why a labour shortage isn't to blame for the city's housing crisis. Plus, they delve into Halifax's deferred plans to abandon its Strategic Road Safety Framework in favour of a new plan that is worse than the old one.
In this edition of the Grand Parade Matt tells Martin all about his interview with Halifax's CAO Cathie O'Toole and director of the Department of Public Works Brad Anguish. Matt explains why this interview left him feeling a bit like a Philadelphia 76ers fan circa 2013. After a break, Matt gives each councillor a rating for their performance during Halifax's budget season
In this episode of the Grand Parade the boys take a break from the budget as Matt grapples with learning new information about the city's transportation planning.
In this episode Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman give 110% as they reach into their bag of sports metaphors to talk about municipal politics in a podcast of two halves. In the first half, Matt gives Martin the lowdown on the civil unrest growing in rural parts of the HRM. Also a look into the frustrating parts of municipal planning. Not to be all doom and gloom, in the second half, Martin learns about all the genuinely good things taking shape for Halifax's future.
In this episode Matt and Martin talk about public safety: the JustFOOD program and police reform. This show notes are abridged due to budget season.
In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt and Martin talk about stories Matt is working on. The Macdonald bike connection is moving forward, but there are some issues with the design, and how the design came to be in the first place. After the ad break, Matt pitches a test for local government to see if they're ready to respond to the climate emergency.
The New Year always comes with the worst hangovers, doesn't it? When HRM council resumes on Tuesday, Jan. 9, Halifax's councillors will be confronted once again with a thorny problem: How to dig the region out of a $68.7 million deficit that no-one on council seems to know how to wriggle out from under. (That is, without taking a popularity hit by raising taxes or cutting key services.) In this week's episode of The Grand Parade, Coast city hall reporter Matt Stickland presents two paths for council to consider—both of which would add millions back to the city's coffers, he argues, if only councillors could stomach the blowback they'd face. Coast reporter Martin Bauman wonders if the same issues plaguing Canada's inability to build high-speed rail are what hinders the HRM from making meaningful—and swift—strides toward its goals. And what's a New Year without a sprinkling of hope? The two talk about why the HRM has real reason for optimism—and what platform priorities they'll be paying attention to in the next municipal election.
In this episode, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman talk about Halifax's budget crunch, why Trish Purdy wants to cut back on the HRM's annual spending on vehicles and why the region is broke. The police budget looks like it'll resemble last year's—what does that mean? Also: Matt gushes about trains.
In this episode, Matt and Martin meet In Halifax Central Library to discuss what the city's budget process will look like this year. Thanks to a motion from councillor Tim Outhit this budget might be the first budget that the city passes in line with its strategic priorities. Also covered in this meeting, the potential of the Board of Police Commissioner's new budget process. Martin also asks Matt about the new study he's one of the authors of, and Matt discovers Martin rode his bike really, really far one time.
Municipal engineer Paul Young has a vision for a “major behavioural change” within Halifax: Converting all urban speed limits in the HRM to 30 kilometres per hour. The reason? Not just to lower the likelihood of deadly collisions, which findings resoundingly show drop off significantly compared to 50km/h, but to cut back on things like traffic noise and pollution while promoting healthier, less costly alternatives. On Thursday, Nov. 16, Young gave his “Slow the Blazes Down” presentation to the HRM's Active Transportation Advisory Committee, of which he is a member. The bummer, as Coast city hall reporter Matt Stickland tells fellow Coast reporter Martin Bauman, is that as good—and necessary—as Young's traffic suggestion is, the political will to make it a reality appears to be about as hard to find in Halifax as a bike lane on Quinpool Road. Or Chebucto. Or Connaught. Or Robie. Or… well, you get the point.Why is it so hard for the HRM to implement the kinds of changes it purports to want? What do John Lohr and Bill 137 have to do with it? Should we be more like Wales? And is Matt still thinking about Otago Drive? Matt and Martin discuss all the above in the latest episode of The Grand Parade, plus detour into the Board of Police Commissioners' latest meeting, why the HRM is broke and what the region would look like if it was run by US marines.
In this episode, Matt and Martin talk at great length about Otego Drive (https://maps.app.goo.gl/4VNHawhGx99YwVrr6) and what that little street can teach us about the dangers presented to us by our local government in the face of this climate emergency.
In this Grand Parade episode, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman dive into the HRM's Integrated Mobility Plan and what it secretly not-so-secretly suggests: Maybe Halifax would've been better off had the province not amalgamated the region in 1996? Matt fills Martin in on why John Lohr's housing power play is a recipe for abuse—if not by the current housing minister, then by his eventual successor. Also, the two discuss one of the biggest cracks in the foundation of the HRM's governance: Really bad minutes. That's right: Minutes.
In this week's episode of The Grand Parade, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss Halifax's Integrated Mobility Plan, and Matt convinces Martin that it's already dead. Why? Because of the way the HRM sets its budget. Plus, the two detour onto the subjects of roads, and whether the provincial government's plans to spend more than $1 billion to expand its highways* should qualify as an investment. (It shouldn't. And it's making Nova Scotia poorer.) Three cheers for the sunk-cost fallacy!*Yes, the money is also earmarked for bridges and ferry services. But mostly roads.
Halifax Wanderers CEO Derek Martin has dreams of a permanent 8,500-seat stadium in Halifax's downtown. Last week, the Canadian Premier League soccer club founder made his pitch to the HRM's Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee to overhaul the municipally-owned Wanderers Grounds—where his club plays—in favour of an all-purpose venue. The cost? An estimated $40-million, according to Martin. The Wanderers CEO has pledged that his club would be prepared to contribute "substantially" to the costs of building such a permanent stadium. To that end, he has also proposed a 30-year tenancy agreement with the HRM to help cover the expenses. He sees the future Wanderers Grounds as a venue that can attract outdoor concerts, host international sports competitions and also be used by the Citadel High School's sports teams. What does "substantially" mean? And how might a new stadium satisfy the mandate of remaining a public good? In this week's crossover episode of The Grand Parade and The Wanderer Grounds, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman put their burning questions straight to Wanderers CEO Derek Martin for answers.
Matt and Martin are back to walk through the council's antics from last Tuesday's meeting. Was council's reaction just theatrics? Do they bear more responsibility than they know? Matt thinks so. There's also discussion about the end of the pizza wars, some transit critiques and building in flood zones. Unlike your boss, sometimes we even give you a bonus! Warning to Wanderer Ground listeners who (like me) get annoyed at hearing the same thing over again, Matt (also me) repeats an anecdote, that lasts about a minute. Sorry!
In this epidsode of the Grand Parade Matt catches Martin up on all of things that have and have not been happening at city hall over the summer. The two talk about last week's council meeting where Shawn Cleary tried to make the housing crisis worse, and Dave Reage's lack of answers on tap pay. All that and more in this week's episode
During the live Grand Parade recording, two listeners asked what Matt thought Olivia Chow's election as mayor of Toronto would mean for the city. The answers on the day of the live show were lacking, so we went and found an expert. In this episode of The Grand Parade, host Matt brings on a fellow City Hall reporter named Matt—Matt Elliott of City Hall Watcher in Toronto. The two Matts spend an hour in the weeds of municipal politics comparing their respective city halls. One Matt explains how his city is getting tap-pay for transit in a few days, and the other Matt explains how his city forces parking into areas that are zoned without parking minimums. You can find Matt Elliot's reporting over at cityhallwatcher.com
This episode of the Wanderer Grounds is a crossover episode! Last week the Friends of the Commons local advocacy group put a post on their website letting everyone know that they are suing the city over the privatization of the Wanderer's Grounds. The reason, according to the legal letter linked above, is they believe the Wanderer's Grounds have been defacto privatized without public consultation, which goes against rules dating as back as far as the Crown grants from the 1700s. Their argument is that since the 1700s, this land has been public, and more recently and specifically, the commitment to make the Wanderer's Grounds public has been codified in law as recently as the 1990s. So, they argue, this land is supposed to be public. They also argue that this land, even though it is, in theory, public there are a lot of restrictions as to who can actually, practically, use the land. So many restrictions that it is defacto private, and the only beneficiary is the Wanderer's ownership. This privatization was done without public consultation and extended (in the new lease) without public consultation. This breaks more rules, and so the Friends of the Commons are planning on suing the city to make them follow the rules they are supposed to follow in the Charter and demanding all operations cease on the Grounds. In this crossover episode of The Wanderer Grounds/The Grand Parade, Matt and Martin take a deep dive into the weeds and imagine a future where the Wanderer's Grounds plays an integral role in forming a community, all the while being a public good in the beating heart of a Wonderful city. Also covered: the game that happened on the weekend.
Take heed of the old phrase, “Be careful what you wish for.” Back in 2005, when Nova Scotia introduced its Capped Assessment Program, the stated goal was to keep seniors and families in their homes that might otherwise have been priced out. The solution of the day was to limit property tax increases to no more than the annual inflation rate. It sounds considerate—and indeed, it worked. But then the price of homes in Halifax rocketed to the moon, and nothing has ever been the same. On this week's Grand Parade podcast, writer Deny Sullivan joins Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman to discuss the unintended consequences of the cap—namely, how it has led to some mansions being under-taxed by $3 million, and how it has also shielded investment property owners with multiple homes from paying more for their additional assets. Sullivan proposes what he describes as “The Perfect Tax Hike”: A way to return $100 million to the HRM annually. After Sullivan leaves, a round of up council's mistakes and answering listener questions with this map (map only available on the linked story)
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