As promised during the episode, here is how, in my opinion, the Traffic Calming Administrative Order should be amended. It would be beneficial to get rid of the TCAO all together so road safety money could be spend on more efficient strategies, like the Integrated Mobility Plan, however, since politicans seem to want to keep it, clause 21 of the TC…

Enough is enough please share this episode with everyone you know in Halifax.By Matt Stickland

In this podcast Grand Parade's city hall reporter Matt Stickland recaps what went down at city hall last week. There's a development on a heritage property, Halifax is making slow progress police reform thanks to an unlikely hero. And there's also a pop quiz! We trust you can find any legislation yourself, and if you can't, you should be able to, b…

In this episode a recap of everything that happened last week. Can you tell that I'm writing this blurb too late on a Sunday? Yes, probably. For more info about city hall, head over to www.grandparade.news To follow Matt on Social media, find him @landofsticks TootlesBy Matt Stickland

Short one this week as the Board of Police Commissioners meeting was cancelled.By Matt Stickland

Hey folks, bit of a lighter show notes this week because I've done a bonus show and had to put a newspaper to bed. See ya next week, don't forget to grab a copy of the first issue of the paper this week at Atlantic News in Halifax and The Dart Gallery in DartmouthBy Matt

Since journalism is homework the job, after last episode where I explained in great details the issues with the HRM's planning, I felt obligated to explain how I'd fix it. For this bonus episode I invited Kevin Wilson aka HFX By Bike and the two of us work through fixing the BRT. Over on his YouTube Channel, Kevin does this sort of thing on a regul…

I suspect most people don't usually read the show notes, but if you're here for the study, scroll down. If you're here for information in this episode Matt Stickland, recaps council and goes deep into the weeds of Halifax's Bus Rapid Transit Plan. Here's the promised study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920919314026?via…

Bit of a light week at city hall and since I forgot it was Good Friday, a bit of a lighter episode. Councillor Janet Steele is trying to get the city to protect and create more heritage districts. Councillor Cathy Deagle Gammon is trying to remove parking spots in land use bylaws because toddlers don't drive cars. All of that and a deep dive into t…

Last week was a relatively slow one as far as the schedule was concerned, with only a Tuesday council meeting and Thursday’s African descent advisory committee. Halifax now has a budget, and thanks to Mayor Andy Fillmore, next year’s budget will be wildly different from this year's. Also, last week, Halifax once again found itself standing in the l…

In a week dominated by breathless international news Halifax's city hall had a relatively slow week. This week there were only two meetings of consequence, which allowed the Board of Police Commissioners to do a deep dive into intimate partner violence and the Envrionment and Sustainability Committee to learn about the failures of the green network…

Now that budget season is done, as threatened, this show will now become a weekly roundup of what happened at City Hall last week. The obvious high/lowlight of last week was when council finished the budget adjustment list debates on Wednesday, March 26, but did you know that other meetings also happened last week? There was an audit that missed so…

Halifax's budget playoffs wrapped on Wednesday March 26 and Halifax has a budget! The budget itself was a political victory for our new mayor, Andy Fillmore, who promised to keep Halifax’s property tax rate flat, which the council did. However, property values went up by 4.7 percent, and so will property taxes. Those property taxes will pay for Hal…

Halifax council’s budget meeting on monday March 24th was a stinker, quite literally, and also because council almost voted to make Halifax’s poorest people just a little hungrier because of how Canadian governments divvied up their power and responsibilities. But the good news is that your odds of dying in a fire are going to decrease slightly in …

It's the second intermission of the budget playoffs and a lot happened in Friday's debate. Council approved an armoured personnel carrier, the central library got it's reserves cut and council avoided making a terrible cut. All that and more in this budget playoffs' second intermission update!By Matt Stickland

By Matt Stickland

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt flys solo to update folks on the future of the podcast and the future of Halifax's budget.By Matt Stickland

The wait is over, it's finally here budget season started on Wednesday. In this episode Matt and Martin dive into what's being going on at city hall from strategic plans, to Windsor street exchange and of course, the start of budget season.By Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman

This past week has been a huge one in municipal politics with Halifax's city council getting an update about how their strategic planning is going. Spoiler alert, it's going very bad. In this emergency episode, Matt and Martin break down the failures of Halifax's bureaucracyBy Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman

It's been a busy start to the new year with with a few big ticket events for the hosts Matt Stickland and Martin Baumen to break down. The Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, December 8th, was one of the best meetings in HRM's recent history, which included five little piggies and some light-hearted civil disobedience. Matt's been d…

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt and Martin look back at the past two weeks in municipal politics and answer some hard hitting questions like: Will transit ever get better in this city? How do you cook a crow? And is there any point to the city's advisory committees? Plus, we also have a new show format! Except for the any other business se…

At long last Coast reporter Martin is back after his paternity leave and he joins Coast city hall reporter Matt Stickland to catch up on everything he'd missed since being out. In this episode, the two talk about how the council is shaping up three meetings into their term. Which councillors are making mistakes? Who's looking promising? The convers…

After an impromptu summer break the Grand Parade is back! Host Matt Stickland sits down with the owner of Atlantic New Chris Greene to talk about how to interview candidates for the upcoming fall election. Chris will be sitting down the candidates of District 7 to interview them and find out who would be the best candidate for his district and want…

In what was supposed to be the last episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election podcast series The Coast's city hall reporter Matt Stickland sat down with The Coast’s newsletter editor Julie Lawrence to answer some listener questions. The conversation bounces around as the two try to answer as many questions as possible. There are a bunch of simple ques…

There are two types of people in this world. There are people who think that headline is needlessly dramatic, and then there are people who understand risk management. The Coast has covered risk management extensively since Halifax’s Auditor General released his scathing indictments of the city’s Risk Management Team, but this is one of those thing…

In this penultimate episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election explainer series, Matt interviews Risk Management expert Bruce Manion. This episode is a direct result of Halifax’s Auditor General’s recent audits in which he found the HRM’s risk management framework to be a bit of a hot mess. In this episode, Bruce explains to Matt how the city should be…

The HFX Votes 2024 series is in the process of wrapping up, with three episodes recorded yesterday to be released over the next few days. Up first is an interview with Céo Gaudet, a former member of the Regional Watersheds Advisory Board. For a little bit of history, the RWAB had a predecessor, the Dartmouth Lakes Advisory Board, which started in t…

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt Stickland sits down with Wes Marshall, the author of Killed by a Traffic Engineer. His book is a meta analysis of traffic engineering studies, and he tells Matt how to determine if Halifax's traffic engineers are doing a good job. Just one note: In the episode Matt says that the HRM has made it's traffic imp…

In this edition of HFX Votes 2024 I sit down with two of the authors of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report: Building Inclusive Communities: A Policy Agenda for Nova Scotia Municipalities that Leaves No One Behind. In this conversation, Christine Saulnier the CCPA’s Nova Scotia director, explains how the city could save a lot of mone…

In this episode of the Grand Parade's ongoing series of municipal issues explainer, I sit down with mayor Mike Savage to find out what the mayor does. This conversation bounces around from the fiscal challenges facing the city, some practical advice for running a good meeting and an answer to the question: Does Mike find it weird that people call h…

In part 2 of the HFX Votes 2024 episode on property taxes I sat down with Darrell Dexter, the former premier of Nova Scotia to ask him about why we have a property tax cap in the first place. This conversation went off the rails almost immediately in the best possible way. Dexter explains that the property tax cap is doing its job, protecting peopl…

The Coast’s municipal election podcast explainers continue with a deep dive into property taxes and the property tax cap. In this episode, Matt sits down with local economist Deny Sullivan to ask him some questions like: What is the property tax cap? How does it work? Is our council penny-wise and pound-foolish? The two get sidetracked a little bit…

In this week's episode, The Coast's Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss HRM staff's eyebrow-raising plans for redesigning the Windsor Street Exchange while making transit worse, plus how councillors aren't using the powers they have at their disposal. Also, if you have any issues you want Matt to look into for the upcoming municipal election p…

In part two of the Halifax Votes Transit episode Matt sits down with Reece Martin of RM Transit to help explain some of the choices Halifax Transit is making. For example, in yesterday's episode It's More Than Busses' Douglas Wetmore proposed that Halifax Transit would be better served by switching to a headway bus service instead of a scheduled on…

In this edition of HFX Votes 2024, The Coast's special municipal election coverage, Matt sits down with Douglas Wetmore of It's More than Busses. In part one of a two-part series Matt finds out what exactly's going wrong with Halifax's beleaguered bus system. Wetmore explains the issues facing transit, some of the issues created by Halifax Transit,…

In this episode Matt Stickland sat down with the CEO of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, Paul MacKinnon in what is the first in a series of explainers leading up to the municipal election. MacKinnon is a guy who knows what a downtown needs to succeed. We talk about the challenges of making unpopular decisions and how downtowns make money f…

In this week’s episode, The Coast’s Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss HRM council’s unanimous passing of federally-prompted zoning reforms and how that will shape the city to come. Plus, Halifax has an emergency response… emergency… and the region’s transportation plans still don’t make sense.…

In this week’s episode of The Grand Parade podcast, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman chat with economist Deny Sullivan about Halifax’s HAF blunders and why a labour shortage isn’t to blame for the city’s housing crisis. Plus, they delve into Halifax’s deferred plans to abandon its Strategic Road Safety Framework in favour of a new p…

In this edition of the Grand Parade Matt tells Martin all about his interview with Halifax's CAO Cathie O'Toole and director of the Department of Public Works Brad Anguish. Matt explains why this interview left him feeling a bit like a Philadelphia 76ers fan circa 2013. After a break, Matt gives each councillor a rating for their performance during…

In this episode of the Grand Parade the boys take a break from the budget as Matt grapples with learning new information about the city's transportation planning.By Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman

In this episode Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman give 110% as they reach into their bag of sports metaphors to talk about municipal politics in a podcast of two halves. In the first half, Matt gives Martin the lowdown on the civil unrest growing in rural parts of the HRM. Also a look into the frustrating parts of municipal planning.…

In this episode Matt and Martin talk about public safety: the JustFOOD program and police reform. This show notes are abridged due to budget season.By Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt and Martin talk about stories Matt is working on. The Macdonald bike connection is moving forward, but there are some issues with the design, and how the design came to be in the first place. After the ad break, Matt pitches a test for local government to see if they're ready to respond to the climate emerge…

The New Year always comes with the worst hangovers, doesn’t it? When HRM council resumes on Tuesday, Jan. 9, Halifax’s councillors will be confronted once again with a thorny problem: How to dig the region out of a $68.7 million deficit that no-one on council seems to know how to wriggle out from under. (That is, without taking a popularity hit by …

In this episode, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman talk about Halifax's budget crunch, why Trish Purdy wants to cut back on the HRM's annual spending on vehicles and why the region is broke. The police budget looks like it'll resemble last year's—what does that mean? Also: Matt gushes about trains.…

In this episode, Matt and Martin meet In Halifax Central Library to discuss what the city's budget process will look like this year. Thanks to a motion from councillor Tim Outhit this budget might be the first budget that the city passes in line with its strategic priorities. Also covered in this meeting, the potential of the Board of Police Commis…

Municipal engineer Paul Young has a vision for a “major behavioural change” within Halifax: Converting all urban speed limits in the HRM to 30 kilometres per hour. The reason? Not just to lower the likelihood of deadly collisions, which findings resoundingly show drop off significantly compared to 50km/h, but to cut back on things like traffic nois…

In this episode, Matt and Martin talk at great length about Otego Drive (https://maps.app.goo.gl/4VNHawhGx99YwVrr6) and what that little street can teach us about the dangers presented to us by our local government in the face of this climate emergency.By Matt Stickland, Martin Bauman

In this Grand Parade episode, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman dive into the HRM's Integrated Mobility Plan and what it secretly not-so-secretly suggests: Maybe Halifax would've been better off had the province not amalgamated the region in 1996? Matt fills Martin in on why John Lohr's housing power play is a recipe for abuse—if not…

In this week’s episode of The Grand Parade, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman discuss Halifax’s Integrated Mobility Plan, and Matt convinces Martin that it’s already dead. Why? Because of the way the HRM sets its budget. Plus, the two detour onto the subjects of roads, and whether the provincial government’s plans to spend more than …