District 13 voting guide: Rookie candidates making waves on the shore

  If you’ve never looked at District 13 on a map and have only been paying attention to municipal politics since the summer of last year, you might have the impression that District 13 consists of Upper Tantallon and Hubbards and that’s pretty much it.

But in reality, District 13 is a massive coastal district, and boasts the quintessential coastal tourism spot, Peggy’s Cove. This district, like its large rural and coastal siblings District 2 and 11, will be the focus of intense scrutiny and problem solving as the city works on coastal protection and reforming rural communities in the next council term.

The tension in District 13 (and most of HRM’s rural communities) is the fact that residents in rural parts of the city pay a similar tax rate to urban residents, but the difference in services they get for those taxes is stark. Rural communities pay similar property taxes to urban residents, but their firefighters and recreation centre workers are volunteers making it feel very unfair to be taxed so heavily for services provided by volunteers.

That fact, juxtaposed with another, is the main tension in rural communities. Because while it is true that rural communities pay a lot in taxes for not a lot in services, it is also true that the services rural communities get are heavily subsidized by the property taxes of some of Halifax’s poorest, but denser, communities. So the tension is this: if we’re talking about tax fairness, rural communities should actually be paying more in taxes for the inadequate services they currently get.

But doing that would be unpopular and also be a pretty dumb way to correct the fiscal issues of rural HRM. So instead of jacking up taxes to pay for roads and maintain volunteer municipal services, the city is planning on doing the much smarter thing and fixing the underlying unsustainability of rural communities. To find out which candidate is up to the challenge of fixing the unsustainability of Canada’s Ocean Playground, The Coast sent out an extensive questionnaire to see what each candidate knows about the issues facing the city ahead of the municipal election on Oct. 19. The Coast followed up with more detailed questions to test each candidate’s policy chops.

And we’ll start with the first of the two candidates who filled out The Coast’s questionnaire.

The first person to fill out the questionnaire in District 13, and the second person to fill out the questionnaire overall, is District 13’s Nancy Hartling. Her answers to The Coast’s questionnaire demonstrated a rurally strong (pun intended) and strong overall understanding of the issues facing the HRM. In her answer to why the budget will be extra crunched this year, she highlighted the inequity built into rural taxation. She said that suburbs were expensive (true) and then continued “that the rural (and not suburban) communities of District 13 (Prospect, Peggy’s Cove, Hacketts Cove, St. Margarets Bay, Hubbards—the entire stretch of the 333 Hwy—also known as the Lighthouse Route), will be paying the same tax rate as suburban communities in the 2024/2025 budget.” She then cited her sources (this is a tax rate map for the visually inclined) and then she continued “and they are getting none of the services that are afforded to their suburban or urban counterparts.” Which is the tension, outlined in the intro.

With a good understanding of the issues, the question then becomes what does Hartling want to do with the municipal powers the province has granted council? In a follow up interview turned in depth policy discussion about rural issues in the HRM, Hartling demonstrated strong policy chops and an ability to think through consequences—intended or otherwise—of a wide range of policies. Ever since the 2008 fire in Porter’s Lake revealed the fact that rural exurbs are a bit of a death trap, things like fire safety and emergency egress have been a pretty hot topic in the rural parts of the HRM. The ideal solution to the emergency egress problem is to build more of them, but if the residents of Porter’s Lake have been waiting 16 years for their emergency exits, it’s likely that Upper Tantallon will have to wait a bit too. A lot of rural communities already have secondary exits that are regularly used in ATV trails, a good way to help evacuation efforts would be to allow people to evacuate using their trails. A good way to evaluate a candidate is to ask them to think through the implications of this policy proposal.

Hartling thought through the pros, like the fact that it’s something the city could implement right now with a little bit of organization. And the cons, like people travelling through the woods pretty close to an out of control wild fire. She measured the risks and judged that the benefits of quick evacuation probably outweighed the risks of the method of evacuation. For those who need a sports metaphor for what this paragraph is saying, this is like having a defender who knows when to pinch and when to back away.

During the interview Hartling demonstrated strong policy chops in other parts of the rural file from recreation to transportation to the implementation of Fire Smart in the HRM.

Nancy Hartling’s website can be found here:

The second person to answer the questionnaire in District 13 (eighth overall) Markus Critchley, union man, had one of the most unique answers to the ‘why is the city facing a budget crunch’ question. He wrote that “The Auditor General’s 2022 audit on the ’management of respectful workplaces’, identified several gaps in the handling of workplace complaints, and suggested this may be contributing to retention throughout municipal departments.” Critchley is not the first candidate to mention the cost of labour as a budget pressure, but most tend to say management in the HRM is bloated and leave it at that. Critchley pointed out that people don’t tend to quit jobs they hate, they quit bosses they hate, and that AG report about respectful workplaces says things like “HRM has a strategic initiative to enhance workplace culture. However, management has not defined what this means or how they will get there. Respect in the workplace could continue to be an issue if management does not monitor whether programs and initiatives to improve workplace culture have been effective.” Or translated to English, employees in the HRM have no real way to protect themselves from bad bosses. This in turn leads people to quit. Or it might not, the Office of the Auditor General also found that HRM didn’t bother to find out why people were leaving. But they really should, because having people leave for preventable reasons is crazy expensive.

In the most recent follow up report from March of this year the HRM has completed only 33% of the recommendations. To the city’s credit, CAO Cathie O’Toole asked for (and council voted to approve) mandatory semi-annual updates on the AG’s recommendations to hold the bureaucracy accountable. The city’s management and director class is undergoing some pretty substantial organizational changes, which are dangerously close to competent good governance. Seems like it might be a good idea to have a voice on council who’s used to thinking about workers as the city reorganizes its workforce.

And in a follow up interview with The Coast, Critchley demonstrated a good understanding of the rest of the issues facing the HRM, and rural communities, especially in the realm of rural transportation.

Markus Critchley has no website listed, but his contact info can be found here.

Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Robert Holden’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.

Robert Holden’s contact information can be found here.

Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Michael A. Marriot’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.

Michael A. Marriott’s contact information can be found here.

Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Dustin O’Leary’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.

Dustin O’Leary’s website can be found here: better13.ca

Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess Dawn Edith Penney’s potential as a councillor, please ask her to complete the questionnaire.

Dawn Edith Penney’s website can be found here: http://facebook.com/votedawnpenney

Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidate in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess John Profit’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire.

John Profit’s website can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/john.profit.5

Analysis

The residents of District 13 can feel good about knowing at least two of their candidates are strong all around candidates and very strong in some additional policy niches. Due to Critchley’s union background he may have an advantage in organizing (read: getting volunteers for his campaign) and as a result would be a slight favourite with the bookies. If gambling on municipal politics was a thing like it is in the states.