Halifax Politics dot ca

There is a great article in today’s Herald about the increase in average age of Nova Scotia’s infrastructure.

The article, here (until the Herald hides it after a week,) says that Nova Scotia has the oldest infrastructure in Canada with an average age of “18 years in 2007 — 1.7 years more than the Canadian average.”

It later goes into some detail:

“The Statistics Canada study said the average age of Nova Scotia’s roads and highways dropped to 16.3 in 2007 from 18.5 in 2001, making it the fourth-oldest road network, behind Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Nova Scotia’s bridges and overpasses had an average age of 28.6 years in 2007, second-oldest after Quebec and up from 24.2 years in 2001.

The province’s water supply system is younger, thanks to large investments in recent years, dropping to an average of 17 years in 2007 from 19.3 in 2004. Nova Scotia’s water treatment facilities are also newer, going to an average of 16.8 years in 2007 from 19.7 in 2003.

But sewer systems in the province have been steadily aging due to low investment rates, reaching an average age of 19.7 years in 2007 compared with 14.3 in 1981, according to the study.”

What does this mean? It means we know how old the “stuff” is. This is a nice thing to know but to key things are missing. One being – how old the “stuff” should be. The other is – how much do you need to spend each year on maintanance so it can make it to the end of its useful life?

Is a bridge supposed to be useful, in most cases, for 40 years? Or is it 50 years? What about water? Sewer? Most of these things have a life span that is known and accepted, for maintenance, planning and depreciation purposes.

Once we know how long something should last, the age of the infrastructure comes into play. If bridges are supposed to last 40 years, then the average age needs to be 20 years. This would mean the province was managing the assets properly, and that they were being replaced on a regular enough basis that none became “too old.”

The next issue is maintainance. Nova Scotia loves to build stuff, and then let it rot. While it would cost more money to get on a regular maintainance schedule, and overcome our deferred maintenance backlog, once we were there, it would save a tremendous amount of money.

It is just common sense that it is cheaper to plug the holes in a roof than it is to deal with water damage, rot and decay after ignoring the holes.

Again, there are accepted percentages, based on the replacement value of an item of infrastructure, that needs to be spent to maintainance. Two percent on a building, say, or one percent on a bridge, or road.

If these were established, the target age, and the ideal maintanance cost, the public and the politicians could then know “this is what it costs to maintain and replace our infrastructure every year.”

This is planning! We could know what we should be spending, and then start making decisions about what we need to do to achieve this goal. Will the politicians and bureaucrats of Nova Scotia deliver this true picture of the state of our infrastructure? Only time will tell.

November 22, 2007

Dear Mr Windsor,

I am writing to you today regarding your request for opinion regarding the HRSB’s upcoming application to the Utility and Review Board Regarding Number and Boundary of Electoral Districts.

Speaking only for myself today, while reflecting on my recent fourteen months experience advocating for my community and quality education in the Halifax Region, I would like to outline several thoughts regarding the opportunities and pitfalls this review creates. Specifically, I would like to address four areas: the selection of the Board, the composition of districts, the size of the districts, the naming of the Board.

Selecting the Board: I agree with the parent who presented to you yesterday night, electing the Board does not work. We have had about two decades of experiment with elected Boards, and the results are poor. As Canadians we don’t elect sheriffs, judges, or the water commissioners, nor should we elect a school board. Education is a service. The Minister of Education is responsible for the service, and he or she is elected. The Board has little of the power normally associated with an elected body, as it cannot sign contracts with its workers, or set tax rates. Why elect this group?

Other jurisdictions, such as Ontario, are toying with returning to appointed Boards, or turning education over to the municipalities. HRM running HRSB would go against the very foundation of the Haywood Report and the entire provincial direction of social services provided from the provincial tax pool and property taxes paying for property services, and I cannot support such a model.

I suggest that a model based on the metro university governance, the Nova Scotia Community College, or even the Water Commission would be far better. There are plenty of precedents and models that are already in use in the province. 4-5 Provincial appointees, 4-5 people recruited by the elected Board, 2 HRM councillors, 2 elected staff reps, 2 elected student reps, and 2 elected SAC reps would be a good place to start. Appoint them for 4-5 years, stagger the terms, recruit the very best people you can guilt into serving (as you yourself were not doubt asked to come out of retirement and serve for the greater good). This would actually be larger than the current model, but I am sure with the right mandate from the minister and the right leadership that we could see our community served better than it has been since 1996.

An appointed board aided and enhanced by more regularized “Super-SAC” meetings would better serve the public good.

Composition of Districts: In the event that the Board continues to be elected, districts will remain an issue. The current status quo is that each district of HRSB includes two districts of HRM council. This means the district size and shape is not reflective of actual educational service delivery areas. There has been a proposal that each family of schools should be a district. Proponents of this suggestion had also suggested that each school district Super-SAC elect a representative to serve on the Board. While the later may not be something that is available under the act, the former may. This would give HRSB a council of 14. Regional factionalism and NIMBY syndrome may occur (it was occurring anyway), but this model may allow for the reconnection of the Board members to organized and active constituencies, keeping the elected Board grounded in this educational reality. Perhaps a recall provision could be considered, as well, to allow the electorate to enforce good behavior.

Size of Districts: I don’t think having a smaller Board will address interpersonal issues the last elected Board faced. Far too many of the Board members have been elected unopposed, and while we all hope that this might change in the next election, there is nothing to say that we might end up with 4 or 8 people who win by acclimation and still lack the personal and professional ability to be successful Board members.

The elected Board members, paid only $7000.00 a year, are essentially volunteers. Having to do the job of a Board member in their spare time while holding down a day job is very difficult. When the Board grew from the size of Halifax, or Dartmouth, to be HRM wide, the elected members were no longer able to rely on their innate sense of “what needed to be done” in their community. A Board rep in the old city of Dartmouth “just knew,” or at least had an idea! The Districts are already far to big for that. Fewer districts, representing even more schools, will not create a more tenable situation.

Naming of the Board: This may be beyond the scope of the URB, or the HRSB, but I strongly recommend that the elected or oversight apparatus of the Board be renamed, or the rest of the Board renamed, to clearly outline the difference between the decision making body and the staff and admin. Halifax Regional School Trustees? Halifax Regional School Administration? The Cabinet is not the Province, or Council is not HRM, so the Board should not be the Board.

Why is this important, you ask? For one, it causes a lot of confusion amongst the public, and needless concern and worry for teachers and principals. “Is he criticizing my employer again?” Criticizing or critiquing the elected board is okay in everyday discourse, this is fair comment, but treating the overall staff and Board admin in the same fashion would rarely be acceptable! The fundamentally political and representative role of the Board, elected or not, requires rigorous public discussion, debate, and sometimes more! Clearly separating oversight from admin would help greatly to reduce confusion and increase the quality of this debate.

I thank you for your time, and commend you for all your hard work,

Yours,

Waye Mason
Parent of Emma, 8, and Rhett, 13

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please feel free to circulate and distribute under this license.

It is a cruel word where your loyal scribe goes on vacation, and then all hell deliciously breaks loose in the world of massive expensive concert promotion in Halifax. Few things could compel me to put down the Corona and get off the beach in Pugwash to write a few words, but the situation between HRM and the Trade Centre Limited (TCL) is one.

TCL, headed by Fred MacGillivray, is the Provincial/Municipal organization with the wide open mission to provide “economic benefits by bringing people together in Halifax and Nova Scotia” and the goal “to be the best events destination in North America within 15 years.” It is unclear if the goal is for Halifax, or the Trade Centre, to be that best event destination.

TCL operates Ticketatlantic, Events Halifax, the Metro Centre (though this is owned by the Municipality), and Mr MacGillivray is the Chair or president of every bid and games committee that the region ever puts together, from Commonwealth Games to Culture Capital proposal.

The not very arms length not-for-profit Events Halifax has been in the news much as of late. It is responsible for scooping up Federal and Provincial money and funneling it into event projects that benefit Halifax, if your definition of benefiting Halifax is “events that take place in the Trade Centre and Metro Centre.”

Many frustrated Halifax based festivals and promoters have been told “if you want ACOA money then go to Events Halifax” and then in turn been told “if you want Events Halifax, you need to move your event into the World Trade Centre.”

Events Halifax task is “to identify events that are available to a host city and determine if Halifax can be that city.” So it was only natural for Mayor Kelly to approach them, as one of the lead partners in last summer’s Rolling Stones debacle, about the possible events he had hoped to bring this summer.

Mayor Kelly was frustrated that Events Halifax had not secured another concert for the Commons this year, so, according to news reports, he went to other private sector concert promoters and requested their help and assistance. These efforts resulted in possible concerts by the Who and Justin Timberlake.

According to news reports, the Mayor then went to Events Halifax to brief them on what was underway, and shortly thereafter, an Events Halifax partner, Montreal based Gillette Entertainment Group (owners of the Bell Centre and the Habs) put in near identical offers on the same dates for the same bands in Halifax.

Now, Halifax has two agencies and two promoters both flailing around on the world stage, looking like rank amateurs. Here they are, competing with each other, trying to convince top flight talent to come to a tertiary market where the one major concert to date, the Stones, sold 40-50% less than its nearest competing market, the more established, forward thinking Moncton.

How could this have happened? Major cities do not work like this. Big cities have good, quality, cheap facilities and sometimes tax credits, and the private sector does the heavy lifting. Halifax has the Mayor’s office competing with a crown corporation through private sector proxies and fighting over it in the media.

You have to feel sorry for the Mayor. Clearly he forgot that when briefing civil servants at arms length agencies about municipal plans for events, it is wise to get the staff to sign non-disclosure agreements, so you can guarantee that they keep their big mouths closed.

How could this happen, and how come these people have not have been fired? As a joint provincial/municipal organizations TCL and Event Halifax represent both governments and are responsible to neither. The Haywood Report in 1992 said that joint responsibility means no one is clearly responsible. He was talking about municipal services and I would argue this is one.

Why does the Province of Nova Scotia run Halifax’s World Trade Centre, and an organization called Events Halifax? These are municipal affairs. A clear chain of command with municipal elected officials at the top is what is required. TCL needs to be reigned in, and Events Halifax rolled into HRM, or Destination Halifax, the HRMs tourism agency.

—
Waye Mason is music and festival promoter, business consultant and activist in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please feel free to circulate and distribute under this license.

It has not been a good year for those that sacrifice themselves to lead the energetic arts and culture sector in Halifax. There is a growing feeling, hovering somewhere between ennui and abject despair, and it is expressing itself throughout the province’s creative continuum.

Halifax has never been an easy town to love if you are a creative person, or as the bureaucrats call them, “cultural worker.” The city and the province it is capital of have never had particularly good support for the arts, and if anything, the gap between expectations and support has never been wider.

In fact, many worry that the limited success we have had in the absence of adequate funding and resources has in fact made it even harder to convince government that more funding is desperately required.

Arguably, Halifax’s reputation as an international centre for art has its roots in the incredible experiment that was NSCAD in the 1970s. For a time, our humble art college was THE world leading institution in art and design.

Garry Neill Kennedy lead the college to unimaginable heights, but the support to continue this momentum, for growth and international leadership, was simply not forthcoming from the Provincial or Federal funders. Don’t get me wrong, NSCAD is still a good institution, and probably better than we deserve, but like most things in Nova Scotia the raw potential of the organization is not being realized due to insufficient leadership and lack of funding.

The situation with NSCAD can be used as a template or referent for the challenges faced by virtually every other arts agency, institution, or business in the province. From craft to film to music, from higher education to art galleries, the potential for greatness is there, but not realized.

Provincially, funding is stagnant. The current government promised to double funding during the election, and then increase the $7 million dollar budget by just $450,000. Vital organizations from the Tattoo to the Writers Federation have not seen significant increases in funding since the 1980s.

Costs continue to rise, funding does not, and the end result is decreasing programming and slashed services. Depending on who you speak too, Nova Scotia’s funding is either the lowest or the middle of the national pack, per capita. How can we lead the nation with anything less than top notch funding?

On the municipal level, the much vaunted “culture plan” has yet to result in concrete action or funding. The HRM has, I am told, over 2200 pieces of art in storage. The city has an entire museum, the Dartmouth Heritage Museum, in storage. The city has finally, after 23 months, reposted the cultural officer job that has been empty since Keith McPhail fled the position is despair in 2005.

There may be meetings underway, there may be “multi-stakeholder committees” meeting and discussing plans, but at the end of the day, the council has yet to commit serious and even adequate money to funding culture.

The most depressing example was told to me at a recent brainstorming session for Symphony Nova Scotia, where we were told that Halifax funds our symphony the least of all municipalities in Canada, with $15,000 a year. The next lowest, you ask? Edmonton at $100,000, and the support rises rapidly in other cities from there. Halifax wants world class art and music? Show us the money!

The creative energy in Halifax has never been stronger. The raw potential is there to have a cultural powerhouse, to be a centre, if not the centre, of independent arts and culture production in English Canada.

The people who sacrifice to stay in a city they love, to create and live their lives, do so in large part because they perceive that things will change for the better. They think that society wants art, wants creativity, and is willing to fund opportunities, and also, to fund not just good or adequate institutions, but amazing and world class institutions and agencies.

Halifax has the potential to be better than average. Halifax can and should be great, but the question remains, will leadership, vision, action and money come in time? Will it come before the current batch of cultural leaders end up packing up and abandoning the city in frustration, and exhaustion? Time is running out.

—
Waye Mason is music and festival promoter, business consultant and activist in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please feel free to circulate and distribute under this license.

If you want to email support for delaying the budget to the Senate (for the admittedly minor good it will do):

Con Comeau, Gerald J. rattel@sen.parl.gc.ca
Lib Cordy, Jane cordyj@sen.parl.gc.ca
Lib Cowan, James cowanj@sen.parl.gc.ca
Lib Mercer, Terry M. mercet@sen.parl.gc.ca
Lib Moore, Wilfred P. moorew@sen.parl.gc.ca
Con Oliver, Donald H. olived@sen.parl.gc.ca
Lib Phalen, Gerald phaleg@sen.parl.gc.ca