FALL RIVER: A recommendation to eliminate three Halifax Regional Municipality councillor positions will bring fairness to everyone, the local councillor said.
However, the former vice-chair of the committee tasked with reviewing district boundaries in HRM said the three don’t come close to marking “significant” change.
Tim Outhit, the councillor for Bedford, predicted the committee would recommend between one to three councillor positions be cut. He resigned from the position as vice-chair before the recommendation was made.
“After observing the process, I’m more convinced that it is a bit of a farce,” Outhit told The Laker. “Council shouldn’t be involved in such a process.”
The review is mandated by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board and occurs every eight years. It is designed to ensure each boundary within HRM is within 10 per cent of each other.
In 2004, a previous district boundary review committee recommended that three positions also be cut. It didn’t find approval from regional council. However, Outhit is intrigued to see what council does this time around.
“It will be interesting to see if council will have the strength and courage to pass it this time,” he added.
District 2 Councillor Barry Dalrymple said his area is the second largest in HRM. Other rural districts that are among the top four as far as population goes are Preston-Lawrencetown-Chezzectcook, Middle and Upper Sackville-Lucasville and Hammonds Plains-St. Margarets Bay. Those districts have around 22,000 people, while many in the city are down to 14,000, Dalrymple said.
“There is no way there is any fairness in any facet of that when you have districts 7,000 people apart in population,” Dalrymple said emphatically. “I don’t care how you look at it.”
Dalrymple said some city councillors tried to justify that population gap by saying their workload is bigger.
“That’s a ridiculous statement,” he added. “We don’t have paved roads; we have to work at getting our roads done. We don’t have water, and the water we do have comes in flooding because of insufficient ditching and whatnot. It’s brutally unfair in the work areas in the representation, councillors representing 14,000 and ones representing 21,000. There’s no fairness in that.”
By going ahead with the proposal, it will make those districts that are 14,000, now stand at 18,000. The number of rural, urban and suburban councillors would almost be exactly the same.
“The most basic flaw is up until now there have always been more urban councillors then suburban and rural,” Dalrymple said.
He said if HRM goes to 20 councillors, it would bring fairness back. It also will see minor items, such as land use variances and signs not go to HRM regional council as they do now. The recommendation was voted on and approved.
“That will be our recommendation to the full regional council that we cut it by three,” he said. “Part B of that same recommendation is that we go to four community councils with five people on each one. It’s our intention to give greater power and authority to these community councils.”
Outhit feels there should be just three community councils made up of five or six councillors, saying each could mitigate concerns that have arisen since amalgamation. He suggests HRM council could be divided into one rural, one suburban, and one urban community council.
“They would deal with the local issues in their community of interest,” Outhit explained. “They must have some spending authority, but big items like annual budgets, police, fire, public transit, and economic development would come to regional council, which would be the full board of directors.”
He said an expanded role of community councils and tax reform must take place.
“If we’re ever to overcome the feeling many still have that we need to de-amalgamate or to split rural and urban HRM,” Outhit said. “This needs to happen. This is our time to be bold and creative.”
Dalrymple said he’s thrilled the committee was able to come up with a recommendation that everyone seems happy about.
“I think it’s exactly where we need to go,” he said. “But I caution this, it still has to be passed by the full regional council. We’ll see where we go. To me the public has spoken loud and clear, they wanted a smaller council. I don’t see how regional council in any kind of good conscious can throw out the recommendation.”
phealey@enfieldweeklypress.com