District 5 voting guide: Choosing between Sam Austin and Mike McCluskey
One of the fastest-growing places in the Halifax Regional Municipality is downtown Dartmouth. The Darkside councillors like to joke that Dartmouth’s unofficial animal should be the crane. Not the bird, but the ones littering the skyline building high-density residential housing around the Dartmouth entrance to the Macdonald Bridge.
After the most recent electoral district boundary review, the new District 5 is more downtown Dartmouth than ever, so it is only fitting that two of Dartmouth’s prodigal sons are competing in the October 19 election to represent their beloved city-within-a-city on Halifax’s regional council.
Sam Austin
Being a councillor is like trying to drink from a fire hose. There is a lot to oversee in a city—technically a regional municipality—larger than Prince
Edward Island. The sheer volume of staff reports, information items,
development agreements and policy changes presented to councillors for consideration is too large for any one person to remember everything. It is important, then, for councillors to develop strategies to make sure they don’t miss anything important that comes across their desk. In order to test election candidates on their legislative chops, The Coast sent out a thorough questionnaire. In order to test how detail-oriented candidates are, there is a slightly misleading question in the questionnaire. Of the incumbent councillors who have filled out the questionnaire, Sam Austin is the only one to have caught the “mistake” in the test.
This is the type of professionalism municipal political watchers have come to expect from Austin over his first two terms in office, and it’s something voters in District 5 can expect Austin to continue to bring to the role should he be re-elected. One of the benefits of eight years of incumbency for someone like Austin is that he was on council when most of the strategic plans affecting Halifax today were being written and debated. As a result, he has a very good understanding of what those plans entail. Over the past eight years on council, Austin has successfully cajoled, debated and lobbied his peers on council to support the better future promised by Halifax’s strategic plans. Over the years he has also become one of the best communicators about what is going on at council, in his novella-size newsletters explaining what council is up to.
It’s hard to be on council for eight years without demonstrating some flaws, but in Austin’s case, those flaws are relatively minor. Unlike his more aggressive peers (think District 9’s Shawn Cleary), Austin is careful to pick battles he thinks he can win, which has led to some complaints from Austin’s more progressive supporters who want to see him vote more consistently in line with his stated ideals when he votes. But the good news is that Austin’s vote record—with infrequent but notable exceptions—is usually as progressive as he claims to be.
The only other downside to Austin as a councillor is that he’s not cynical. While this is often a good thing, especially in politicians, Austin’s trust in the professionalism of Halifax’s bureaucracy has led to him having to eat crow when he’s trusted but ultimately been misled, misinformed or lied to by city staff.
Sam Austin’s campaign website: https://samaustin.ca/
Mike McCluskey
Bombastic, outspoken and confrontational are words that one could use to describe former Dartmouth mayor Gloria McCluskey, and it seems like the political apple has not fallen far from the political tree as her son Mike McCluskey campaigns for the District 5 council seat.
It seems to be a McCluskey trait to have a nuanced view of municipal politics communicated more directly than people are used to. Take, for example,
McCluskey’s answer to The Coast’s questionnaire about the Infrastructure Asset Management Administrative Order. He wrote that “a simple way of thinking of Infrastructure Asset Management is like sticking to your car manufacturer’s maintenance schedule to ensure that projects don’t incur large costs for repairs. However, it is also coupled with a budget to make sure the maintenance can be paid for. So you buy a Jaguar, but don’t have the money budgeted to maintain the vehicle, this causes the vehicle to malfunction requiring expensive repairs or the loss of the use of the car.”
McCluskey added that an infrastructure plan would prevent the city from making bad decisions on “suddenly popular” pieces of infrastructure like a stadium. Since there is more than one way to build a stadium, in a follow-up phone conversation with The Coast to talk about his answers, McCluskey explained that the city building a stadium could be a good idea if it’s done like the soccer Wanderers are proposing—in which the Wanderers would give money to the city to help the city build a stadium that the city would own, and then rent field time to the Wanderers. But he does have issues with what the CFL was proposing—where the proposal was for the city of Halifax to millions of dollars to subsidize the fantasy of some rich football fans in exchange for 60 hours a week of access to the publicly funded stadium.
Perhaps it’s due to hearing a parent complain at the dinner table about the people they work with, but McCluskey doesn’t really trust city staff. He points to his issue with the Centre Plan as an example. He’s not interested in re-litigating the past, but he says that some of staff’s council-approved suggestion to cut and copy the plan for Halifax over into Dartmouth wasn’t all that smart. The issue, according to McCluskey, is that Halifax was built more or less on a grid thanks to British colonization, and Dartmouth was built as more of a web thanks to the Macdonald Bridge opening and subsequent automotive colonization. Even though he agrees with the intent of the Centre Plan to limit suburban expansion, he believes that Dartmouth should have had a plan better-tailored to Dartmouth’s unique layout.
Like his competitor, McCluskey too has some weaknesses as a candidate. The trademark McCluskley brashness is not always the best tack to use if the goal of municipal governance is building and maintaining bridges. As someone who’s been a Halifamous internet personality for over a decade, it’s easy to claim that McCluskey doesn’t take things seriously enough, and he’ll readily admit that the criticism of being lazy hits pretty close to home. Although McClusky will also point out that being lazy is often seen as a strength in management circles, as lazy employees are naturally incentivized to find more efficient ways of doing things.
Mike McCluskey’s campaign website: https://www.mccluskeydistrict5.ca/
Summary of findings
The voters of District 5 are lucky in this municipal election, with this contest being one of style over substance. Both candidates have demonstrated a strong understanding of the issues facing Dartmouth and the HRM as a whole. Both candidates are well-versed in the HRM’s strategic plans, and have clearly articulated how those plans could or should work in downtown Dartmouth. Most importantly, both candidates clearly love downtown Dartmouth and want it to live up to its potential.
For voters in District 5, this election is more about choosing what type of candidate you want representing you at City Hall. If you want a collaborative city builder who reforms the hegemonic pillars of governance through negotiation and relationship building, your vote should go to Sam Austin. If you want someone to go to City Hall and fight against those hegemonic pillars of governance and affect change by destroying and rebuilding them, then your vote should go to Mike McCluskey.
