Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
Not too sure about the "demonstrably" part. You do support useless bike lanes, and haven't done anything to show that you are in favor of development downtown. Calling for more tax dollars to go to artists isn't a key part of your job.
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In any given week I am touching on cogswell, transit, infrastructure money for downtown (much easier to imagine now that the Feds have reupped the build Canada fund), the regional plan, the centre plan, and a tiny bit of active transportation.
Tax reform and relief and development charges are a major thrust for after this budget cycle, by time the election happened and without a landslide change in council, it was too late to change direction for 13/14 though some small things are happening. Look for this in 14/15.
What I have done 'in favor' of downtown are two main things:
1 - I got council talking and staff working on actually acting on the economic strategy, the Community Planning Economic Development Standing Committee has a report coming to create the $50 million dollar Urban Core fund, $10 mil over 5 years and an ongoing strategic reserve - we will see paving and street scaping accelerate in the main commercial areas.
http://halifaxmag.com/2013/03/featur...-for-downtown/
2 - I have a open for business approach to downtown/SGR. I meet with the BID Exec Dir regularly, attend their board meetings, and call and email every business or developer in the papers saying they may move to or build in downtown. I set up my office at city hall as a place to meet informally with all these investors and stakeholders, so for example the paper had the news about the NFB development on a Thursday or Friday and in less than a week was meeting Steve and his architect in my office to talk about what I could do to help.
As for the other stuff:
Bikes - The thing is, all the data nationally shows that people and employers place a very high value on walking or biking to work, so it IS important to the economic well being to the city, all $1 million a year that goes on AT trails for the entire area. While the entire regions modal split is nothing too amazing (10% walk, 1% bike to work) the splits in the core (Dartmouth and peninsula) are high, 40% and more walk and bike to work. This is a great thing that is increasing, so it has worked to keep cars in driveways, keeping pressure off roads. This is measurable progress that saves the city money and these investments help attract and retain business in the core.
But it is also about 3 hours a month of work, being prep and participation in one committee meeting a month. Hardly defines my work week.
Arts - This is also a small part of my time, but yes, I will fight for HRM having comparable programs to every other medium size city in Canada. Of course. Why not? We should have what London, Victoria, Saskatoon has, shouldn't we? Arts also plays a part in creating an attractive place to live and work, and we need to be in that space, again, it is small ball in terms of money, but it still needs to be done.