Former Dartmouth mayor says Halifax council is ‘most dysfunctional’ she’s ever seen

Halifax council has been at odds over several recent topics, including possible strong mayor powers.

Gloria McCluskey’s political career spanned 23-and-a-half years, including serving as the last mayor of Dartmouth in the early 1990s.

She still closely follows every level of government and watches every Halifax Regional Municipality council meeting.

“This is the most dysfunctional council that I have ever seen, and I served on a few of them,” she tells CTV News Atlantic.

She says people should pay attention to what’s happening at city hall.

“People should care because it’s costing us a lot of money to keep them there, number one,” she says. “Number two: (council is) in charge of whatever happens in this municipality.”

Cathy Deagle Gammon, a two-term city councillor representing Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley, says things haven’t been as smooth as she had hoped with this council so far.

“It has been bumpier and we need to be honest about that,” she says. “Everybody that’s looking at it can see the bumps. I think councillors and the mayor feel them a little bit more.

“Sometimes we’re storming and forming all at the same time.”

Still, she’s confident council will evolve and iron out the kinks.

An early motion that Mayor Andy Fillmore campaigned on – to de-designate Halifax’s homeless encampments – was voted down. He’s also been on the losing side for a motion about the Windsor Street Exchange and more recently, Morris Street’s bike lane design.

Last month, Fillmore wrote to Municipal Affairs Minister John Lohr, saying “a sobering conclusion has emerged” nine months into council’s mandate.

“In our current governance model, the disconnection between democratic choice at the ballot box and decision-making at city hall is hindering rather than helping delivery of the priorities for which Halifax residents voted,” he said, noting that “structural change” to Halifax’s governance model should be considered.

The longtime politician previously said he did not “fully understand the barriers” to fulfilling his mandate until he was elected.

‘We’re a work in progress’

Speaking to reporters last Tuesday, Fillmore was asked how the current council is functioning.

“We’re a work in progress,” Fillmore said. “I think we’re figuring our working together out.”

That was after a contentious rescission of council’s design of Morris Street bike lanes – overturning their previous decision to go with one-way traffic and two-way bike lanes.

It was a move Fillmore opposed – and one that was threatened to be overturned by the province.

“The moment that we’re in, the change that this moment requires, would result in a fractious moment, the fractious moment that we’re experiencing,” Fillmore said. “This moment is calling for us to change and to do things differently.”

Janet Steele, a first-term councillor who represents Timberlea-Lakeside-Beechville-Clayton Park and Wedgewood, has a different perspective on how things have gone so far.

“I think council is operating fairly well,” she says.

Steele points to some achievements that council has hit so far, including holding a flat tax rate and eventually charting a path forward with the Windsor Street Exchange redevelopment.

But she admits she was caught off guard when Fillmore, a former city planner, said he didn’t fully understand the barriers he would face in the mayor’s chair.

“Democracy is messy,” Steele says. “It takes a while to get to a decision. So, I find it surprising that he did not understand the role of mayor.”

She says there’s room for further collaboration from the mayor, particularly when it comes to giving notice about motions he’s bringing to council.

She believes the Morris Street controversy is being used as a “wedge issue.”

“It’s a wedge issue designed to give the impression that Mayor Fillmore requires strong mayor power,” she says. “I see all the noise and drama around that, purposely designed to say, ‘Oh, I can’t get what I want… I can’t achieve it with the current governance model.’”

Strong mayor powers

Premier Tim Houston has said discussions have been ongoing around giving Fillmore additional power, though those powers haven’t exactly been defined.

“We want people at all levels of government to have the tools necessary to properly govern,” Houston reiterated when asked about the issue on Tuesday. “It’s a discussion that’s happening, for sure, but there’s no more movement than the discussion.”

“Politics is about people,” Houston said in an interview with CTV News Atlantic’s Todd Battis on July 17. “We can’t let agendas and personal conflicts have a negative impact on people.”

Deagle Gammon says if strong mayor powers were raised on the campaign trail from either the mayor or the premier, she wouldn’t have put her name on the ballot box.

But she says it’s important to acknowledge that few details have been shared about what powers could be granted.

Some have suggested that, if implemented, Nova Scotia’s model could replicate Ontario’s policy for some of its municipalities.

According to that province’s website, those powers can include:

• ability to appoint a CAO
• ability to hire municipal division heads
• ability to create and appoint chairs of committees
• veto power and council override

-With files from CTV News Atlantic’s Sean Mott

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