Weak mayor. Weak council. Weak understanding of how municipal government should work in a small city.

After all these years, folks are talking about weak and strong mayors and what the mayor’s actual job description is. Even the mayor himself seems somewhat interested now in what his job is.

Are you noticing that this whole HRM thing is not working? That it's hurting all of Nova Scotia? And that it's contributing nothing to our national project?

Our province is now at the bottom of the list. thebeens.substack.com/p… But it's obvious we have vast natural wealth and opportunity. What's going wrong?

Stupidity. It's when your choices are so bad, not even you benefit… and somehow, everyone else loses too. It's the opposite of a win-win. It’s a lose-lose… with an extra side of lose.

And yet, we live in a place of smart, educated, interested people who follow the most complex stories, news, sports stats, and esoteric info of all sort.

Could it be the unique feature of the current system is that it feels like it belongs to someone else? It's government, but not of the place. It's big box one size fits none, and its most serious and damning criticism is that it fails the 'of the people, for the people, by the people' test even in a small city with only a few major issues.

Here’s a reasonable, lawful, and politically feasible process for creating empowered borough-style local governments (they could be called arrondissements or community councils) within Halifax Regional Municipality. It's been successfully used in London, Montreal, New York, and Norway to create accountable local government in complex, changing cities.

We're pitching for an even weaker mayor today in THE BEE.