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  #21  
Old Posted May 1, 2012, 3:23 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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So now, instead of being in one spot, all of these departments are massively scattered?...

How many of these offices have to be built or significantly renovated in their new locations?

This is crazy.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 1, 2012, 3:28 PM
beyeas beyeas is offline
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They "claim" this will be revenue neutral, because costs occurred will be offset by other savings... which strikes me as about as likely as Bev Oda clipping coupons to get a good deal on OJ.
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  #23  
Old Posted May 1, 2012, 9:33 PM
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So now, instead of being in one spot, all of these departments are massively scattered?...

How many of these offices have to be built or significantly renovated in their new locations?
All of them. There isn't a whole lot of even class C office space in places like Digby or Shelburne. Word is the guys in Waterford are going to reno an abandoned call center (which probably originally started as an abandoned IGA or whatever) to handle those poor saps being sent there. The Truro bunch will likely end up at the old Ag college, which is pretty awful right now. As for the other 2 spots, your guess is as good as theirs. It only takes $$$. Yours and mine.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 1, 2012, 10:57 PM
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I can see only one department move that would make sense. That said, here's a great signal for the downtown. Worse vacancy rate in other 15 years and now the government annouces they are moving three departments out.
Add to this federal cuts... wow.... ugly.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 2, 2012, 5:22 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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It's bad enough that Halifax's downtown must withstand stagnation from drained demand due to the city's many growing business parks -- now these government departments are all moving.

Absurd.

How in God's name can this be revenue neutral? Is it magically accounting any hypothetical spin-off developments for the villages and towns to which these departments are locating? As far as I know, there aren't any municipal plans for urbanising in Nova Scotia, outside of HRM. These re-located government departments may very well, upon their completion, be amongst continued economic inactivity.

What wonderful waste.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 3, 2012, 6:03 PM
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Just read this little article this morning. According to Jamie Baille not all of these job moves are coming from HRM, but some will be transfered from towns around NS. And naturally this doesnt sit well with him. Those jobs just have to come from Halifax dont they...


Quote:
Tories say public mislead over civil service jobs leaving Halifax

Nova Scotia Conservatives say the government misled the public this week when it announced a plan to relocate some civil service jobs from Halifax to rural areas.

The government said Monday it was moving 93 positions from Halifax, including 25 workers with a Justice Department program that collects court-ordered spousal and child support payments.

But Tory Leader Jamie Baillie said a number of the jobs in that program are actually coming from offices in Kentville, New Glasgow and Amherst.

“The government should say what it is really doing … to pitch that this is all about moving jobs from Halifax to rural Nova Scotia when at least in this case that’s not true,” Baillie told reporters.
rest of the article here: http://metronews.ca/news/halifax/128...a-scotia-tory/
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  #27  
Old Posted May 4, 2012, 1:11 AM
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Moving maintenance enforcement? More empty office space in an already flooded market! But hey, New Waterford will win, right? Moving jobs from depressed market to depressed market is sheer brilliance.

It honestly is one of the dumbest things that Ive ever read. How this will save any money is beyond me. If anything doing the exact opposite and combining departments under one central roof will save money (ie: shared computer network, copier, clerical staff, floorspace, electrical, maintenance.. etc etc.), and lets not even begin to forget what this will add in travel expenses.

The only move that even remotely makes sense is Ag to Truro. Its pretty close to Halifax and it is the centre of agriculture research in the province. But even this move is stretching it.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 4, 2012, 2:17 AM
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Hasn't the NDPs base of support been in Halifax for a number of years? Is the government taking that for granted in the hopes of keeping their rural support, or do they actually think this is a good idea?
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  #29  
Old Posted May 4, 2012, 2:38 AM
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Hasn't the NDPs base of support been in Halifax for a number of years? Is the government taking that for granted in the hopes of keeping their rural support, or do they actually think this is a good idea?
They have lots of support in Halifax but the premier is from a small town and a couple of the moves are directly to the rural districts of rural NDP MLAs. I was hoping that this would be a more "urban" government but that doesn't seem to be how it is panning out.

I don't know much about it, but there were a couple of struggling small town mills recently. The one in the premier's hometown got a bailout. As far as I know the other got nothing and closed down. Somebody else can probably say more about this story.

The pork barrel politics are awful and a big reason why NS is uncompetitive in a lot of ways. A big percentage of the NS provincial debt is literally handouts to rural industry. On top of the debt itself this has had the undesirable effect of keep a large, unproductive rural population on life support. In other provinces those populations relocated to the cities decades ago. I would not be surprised if the urban/rural split alone is enough to account for the difference in average wealth in Atlantic Canada and other regions.
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  #30  
Old Posted May 4, 2012, 2:39 AM
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Hasn't the NDPs base of support been in Halifax for a number of years? Is the government taking that for granted in the hopes of keeping their rural support, or do they actually think this is a good idea?
Certainly their core support is mostly HRM-based. They have a few pockets elsewhere but picked up enough seats in rural NS last time due to general dissatisfaction by the voters with the alternative. They are trying to solidify that rural support to keep otherwise unimpressive candidates like Lenore Zann in office. This may well backfire, along with several of their other decisions.

They are realizing that governing is far more difficult than criticizing, and are resorting to old-school political pork-barrel tactics. They are in some ways the worst of all possible worlds, using the same tactics as all other political parties, but beholden to big labor and especially the NSGEU. All of Joanie Jessome's outrage and Dexter's hard-line statements over the health care negotiations has been carefully stage-managed for the benefit of the naive.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 4, 2012, 3:47 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Certainly their core support is mostly HRM-based. They have a few pockets elsewhere but picked up enough seats in rural NS last time due to general dissatisfaction by the voters with the alternative. They are trying to solidify that rural support to keep otherwise unimpressive candidates like Lenore Zann in office. This may well backfire, along with several of their other decisions.

They are realizing that governing is far more difficult than criticizing, and are resorting to old-school political pork-barrel tactics. They are in some ways the worst of all possible worlds, using the same tactics as all other political parties, but beholden to big labor and especially the NSGEU. All of Joanie Jessome's outrage and Dexter's hard-line statements over the health care negotiations has been carefully stage-managed for the benefit of the naive.
I don't know how planned it is, but I think you are right.

Ultimately, the NDP is doing a decent enough job aside from stupid moves like this.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 6, 2012, 1:46 PM
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I just read this article about how the Newfoundland and Labrador government are interested in having employees work from home. Towards the end though it mentions how in the 1990s the Liberals government moved provincial offices from St. John's to other areas of the province, I assume they were thinking along the same lines as Dexter. Anyways it mentions how this woman, who had been interviewed in the news earlier the week, was working for government at the time and her job moved to the west coast. She was close to retirement age and decided to go early, and take a reduced pension, instead of moving across the island. Now she has difficulty paying for everything with the increased costs.

Anyways I thought that was interesting when I saw that this plan has been tried before here. Hopefully there won't be to many negative effects like there was for this woman.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...-home-505.html
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  #33  
Old Posted May 12, 2012, 8:51 PM
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I don't know how planned it is, but I think you are right.

Ultimately, the NDP is doing a decent enough job aside from stupid moves like this.
I really don't see it being that bad
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  #34  
Old Posted May 13, 2012, 3:24 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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I really don't see it being that bad
Well, I can't see it being good for office space vacancy rates in Halifax.

Also, what about the role of these bureaucrats in working with foreign officials?

Lastly, the travel costs and wasted time generated would be substantial burden when considering that this will decentralize operations.

How can you justify this as a good thing? I doubt most people outside of Halifax are even qualified to do this type of government administration effectively... de facto implying that people will have to move from Halifax to these rural areas.

It makes absolutely no sense... unless you are trying to win an election... which decreases social surplus and hurts everybody.
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  #35  
Old Posted May 13, 2012, 9:03 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian View Post
Well, I can't see it being good for office space vacancy rates in Halifax.

Also, what about the role of these bureaucrats in working with foreign officials?

Lastly, the travel costs and wasted time generated would be substantial burden when considering that this will decentralize operations.

How can you justify this as a good thing? I doubt most people outside of Halifax are even qualified to do this type of government administration effectively... de facto implying that people will have to move from Halifax to these rural areas.

It makes absolutely no sense... unless you are trying to win an election... which decreases social surplus and hurts everybody.
It's extremely disappointing. I want to hear Dexter justify this.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 14, 2012, 1:03 AM
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According to David Jackson in the Chronicle Herald Fridaym it looks like it's going over like a lead balloon with the staff. Surprise!

"Joan Jessome, president of the Nova Scotia Government & General Employees Union, said 35 affected people who went to a meeting Thursday night said they don’t want to move.

She said about three-quarters of the affected workers she’s heard from don’t want to go, including most people in the Fisheries Department."




Come hell or high water, the NDP is going to force this ill-conceived idea through. Going to be no cost savings either, since staff that wont go will likely be shuffled elsewhere meaning that the departments will have to hire new employees.

"About 100 civil service jobs are moving to different parts of the province, whether or not the workers want to go with them, deputy premier Frank Corbett said Friday.

“We’ve made our mind up that we’re going to consolidate that work,” Corbett said at Province House. “If they don’t want to go, we’ll try our best to find them places in the civil service.”

http://thechronicleherald.ca/novasco...moving-forward
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  #37  
Old Posted May 14, 2012, 5:23 AM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Bad move Dexter, you're fucking up.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 29, 2012, 11:45 AM
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This makes about as much sense as building the worlds largest fiddle.

I wonder how many hands were shaken, and shoulders patted to have this hit the table?

My question is then, how much is this going to cost, come the next government, to put back? And how is that going to effect the market downtown? Maybe more pressure on the city to loosen the hell up on tower development.

That last bit was purely speculative optimism, but either way, someone is going to right this somewheres down the road, and I bet it will cost more than it did to implement.
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Last edited by W.Sobchak; May 29, 2012 at 11:46 AM. Reason: only on coffee #1
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  #39  
Old Posted May 29, 2012, 3:15 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Aside from existing employees moving from Halifax, or new employees being hired from Halifax and moving to these locations... how is this even possible?

The talent pool for government administration is bad enough in the biggest city in the region... how are they going to find qualified people in upper-butt crack NS?



I bet all the heritage cronies in the NDP are loving this because they can justify that there isn't office space demand downtown. This is a shot at Halifax and at downtown. Its not like jobs are being destroyed in rural areas, they are merely being destroyed in Halifax. #irrational

I bet the trade offs in costs between Halifax rents vs. all of the costs of decentralizing (and the eventual reversal as mentioned by a number of fourmers) will be astronomical.

Haligonians, particularly those living on the peninsula and downtown are getting screwed every which way.
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  #40  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2012, 2:40 AM
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Apparently only 5 of 71 employees elected to move, mostly to Truro (0 of 23 agreed to go to New Waterford).

It's going to cost a lot of money to hire new people.
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