FALL RIVER: District 2 could see its landscape change drastically, depending on the outcome of an ongoing District Boundary Review by the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).
The review, which occurs every eight years, is designed to ensure each boundary within HRM is within 10 per cent of each other. As it stands, some city districts in Halifax have between 13-14,000 residents, while District 2 is estimated to have more than 22,000, 10 per cent higher then it should be. It could mean part of the district may join with another district.
Councillor Barry Dalrymple, the representative for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank with HRM regional council, said the issue has just begun to be looked into by councillors. The review is due to be submitted to the provincial government by the end of 2010.
“I absolutely want people to understand the ramifications of this issue,” Dalrymple said. “It’s not, by any means, a simple matter. It involves how council governs the municipality, it involves the size and number of councillors and it involves the future size and make up of the actual districts.
“There’s a process to go through. Basically what happens here is the province, when they mandated the HRM; it also meant we had to do an internal review on governance and boundaries. This is the time.”
Dalrymple has volunteered to represent the Marine Drive, Valley and Canal community council on the committee because he feels the issue is a matter of urgency for this district. One councillor from each of the community councils, plus Mayor Peter Kelly, will make up the committee.
“As a member of this committee I’m committed to being neutral and fair, while we listen to residents’ comments and opinions on these issues,” Dalrymple said.
He said the first phase of the review will cover governance, powers of community council’s, committee’s and there will be seven public meetings, beginning in February. The Marine Drive, Valley and Canal community council hosts two of the meetings, Feb. 24, in Sheet Harbour and March 10, in Lawrencetown.
An even closer meeting for those in District 2 was set for Feb. 25, at Sackville Heights Community Centre, although it is being put on by the North West Community Council. All meetings will start at 6:30 p.m. Dalrymple will be in attendance at each of the scheduled seven meetings on the issue.
A second set of hearings are scheduled for early fall and one of those will be held in District 2.
He encourages people to come out and attend the district review meetings to give feedback. He said the meetings are strictly setup to hear feedback on governance.
“We want to hear from people what form of government they think council should be,” he added. “Do people want a councillor to be sitting around the phone all day, answering calls about potholes and calling those in? I would say that is absolutely the wrong approach. I don’t believe in that. You can try and get me home, but I prefer going out to public meetings, community meetings, committee meetings, HRM meetings, getting stuff done. I believe my job is to get entire streets paved, not to fix potholes.
“For those that do want that service, if you want to phone when your potholes not fixed, your streets not ploughed within 15 minutes or your grass isn’t cut, then your going to need 40 councillors. Quite frankly we can’t afford that many and I see no reason to do that. If you want councillors to concentrate on policy making, law making, that kind of thing, you can easily have 15 councillors, while having council assistants and other staff people handle those other calls.”
He said with each area being included in the community council, they should be given more authority to get things done.
“We do things way quicker then regional council,” he added. “Whether it’s a development agreement, a variance, things that come to community council can usually be resolved within two to three months, whereas many things come to regional council take up to two years. If the community councils were allowed to do more, they would be a great boon for us and help us with the way we do business. They could also be a great cost-saving measure to the taxpayer.
“Having said all that, this is going to boil down to people coming out and giving their opinion. If nobody comes to these public meetings, if they don’t speak out, then we’ll remain status quo and nothing will change.”
phealey@enfieldweeklypress.com