Halifax’s District 2 is one of the HRM’s longest. It starts at Ross Road just outside Cole Harbour, and a brisk 1.5 hour drive down the Eastern Shore will take you to the district’s end down by Sheet Harbour.
This district, like most predominantly rural districts, is starting to buck against the city and its current long-serving councillor. The undercurrent of resentment has been building since the province’s 1996 amalgamation of Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Halifax County into one megamunicipality. There is a prevailing rumour in District 2 that the rural communities, like the Sheet, Musquodoboit and Three Fathom Harbours, had county budgets that were in the black until amalgamation sucked all that money out of the Harbours and into the roads of HRM’s suburbs.
After nearly 30 years of simmering, this tension has boiled over in time to be relevant for the October 19 municipal elections thanks to a proposal for a sidewalk in Porters Lake. City staff, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that adding a sidewalk to the Porters Lake strip mall is a good idea. It’s not, mostly due to the fact that everyone will still need to drive to the strip mall, and the strip mall is mainly a parking lot, and parking lots are hostile to pedestrians due to parking lots’ complete lack of pedestrian infrastructure.
(As an aside, this is one of the weirdest things about parking lots. Their intended use is to store private vehicles as people transition from car driving to walking. But even though everyone who drives into a parking lot is expected to start walking, most parking lots have no designated space to allow people to walk across them safely.)
Anyway, residents are furious at the change for two main reasons. The first is because there are better places in Porters Lake for pedestrian infrastructure, like nearby schools. The second is that the residents of Porters Lake are being asked to pay an area rate that would bring their property tax bill up to the equivalent of the urban property tax rate. It makes people angry that for the urban tax rate, urban city dwellers get things like publc transit, firefighters and HRM-staffed rec facilities. For their functional urban tax rate, the residents of Porters Lake will only get a sidewalk that no one will use.
During this election, The Coast sent out a substantial candidate questionnaire to determine which candidates are equipped to face the city's complex challenges in the four years to come (like where to put sidewalks). For those candidates who filled out the questionnaire, The Coast followed up with more detailed questions to further test their policy chops. This information is central to what we can tell the public about the candidates in each of our voting guides.
There are only two candidates in District 2, and we’ll start with the one who filled out the questionnaire.
Will Gilligan
A few candidates went buck wild on The Coast’s questionnaire, going above and beyond the level of detail expected. Some candidates went so long that they had to submit their answers via novel-length email or 10-page pdf. Gilligan is one of the candidates who wrote a novel. Take, for example, this question: “Every year the municipal budget has far less money than the city needs to do everything it wants. This year is shaping up to be the worst one yet. Why do you think this is?” Gilligan responded with an answer that named nine issues negatively affecting the HRM’s budget: inflation and rising costs; population growth and urban expansion; limited revenue sources; infrastructure deficits; federal and provincial funding uncertainty; affordable housing crisis; public transit deficits; climate change and emergency preparedness; and debt servicing.
Not content with just listing the issues, Gilligan also provided a list of nine things he thinks the city should do to help alleviate municipal budget pressures, including diversifying revenue streams, increasing housing supply to boost the property tax base, introducing new taxes or adjusting existing ones, and reducing operating costs.
In the reducing operating costs section, Gilligan said the city could save money by outsourcing municipal services to private companies, an answer that deserved probing in a follow-up interview. Gilligian is the owner of the Old No. 7 Restaurant, so we asked how it would be cheaper for the city to order food from his private company instead of making it themselves. In modern politics, changing one’s mind is often seen as a negative trait that comes with accusations of waffling. But in today’s world, the changing climate will require our leaders to receive new information, assess it quickly, and change policy as we adapt to whatever fresh hell awaits us as we reap the seeds the oil and gas industry has sown.
Gilligan demonstrated that he likely has the policy chops to govern in these unprecedented times. On the fly, he thought through what he wanted to achieve (reduce municipal spending) and how his initial assumptions might not have been correct. After a bit of thought, he clarified that if the city needs to contract out for things it might not want to do (like restaurant stuff), then there are probably ways to make that procurement and tendering system more cost-efficient. And, since it stands to reason the city could potentially save money by bringing some things back in-house, Gilligan agreed those things are worth exploring when the goal is to reduce municipal spending. For those who need a sports metaphor to understand what this paragraph is saying, this is the equivalent of a minor-league athlete demonstrating that they have the skills required to step up to the majors. Just like every promising Mooseheads player didn’t turn into a Nathan MacKinnon, this potential is not a sure bet, but it is pointing in the right direction.
Gilligan, who is also a fan of sports metaphors, said he’s making some rookie mistakes. Early in his campaign, he mixed up provincial and municipal jurisdiction of regulations. Which is a classic rookie move, and there are even some veteran provincial politicians who don’t seem to understand what’s in their jurisdiction. He says his track record as a restaurateur shows he can successfully correct mistakes. In his first year of running his restaurant, he was likely heading for the same fate as the string of unsuccessful restaurants in that Highway 7 location. More surprising than the restaurant’s longevity is the lack of turnover in its staff. Gilligan credits this to listening to his staff, recognizing the mistakes he was making, and then changing policies and practices to address his staff’s concerns.
Will Gilligan’s website can be found here: https://www.willgilligan.com
David Hendsbee
The sitting councillor has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire, but like anyone who’s held office for a prolonged period of time it’s possible to make somre predictions about what yet another Hendsbee term will hold.
Take, for example, the upheaval about Porters Lake’s sidewalk. At the public hearing, the people of Porters Lake expected Hendsbee to be a champion for good infrastructure, but instead he acted like a referee. He spent more time explaining that even though the area rate for the sidewalk would be equivalent to the urban tax rate, it was technically an area rate for a sidewalk, so it’s not supposed to pay for things like a professional fire service. While correct, that argument fundamentally misunderstands what constituents were expecting from him.
Although Hendsbee has been a stalwart rhetorical champion for rural issues, he doesn’t tend to back it up with policy proposals. For example, many residents of on the Eastern Shore have asked for better Halifax Transit service. While there are a lot of very good lack of density related reasons why rural HRM won’t get urban-style public transit, Hendsbee’s main contribution to making better rural transit happen is by voting for things when they come up and tossing a casual “I think we should do more with Park & Rides” into a debate. Even though he votes for and says he wants to see better rural transit, he often fails to live up to those stated ideals in the proactive legislative side (read: asking for staff reports).
David Hendsbee’s website can be found here: http://hendsbee.ns.ca/
Analysis
David Hendsbee has held an elected position in politics almost every year since 1993, and has been the councillor for District 2 for 23 years. He’s built up a solid political base primarily by attending any community event anywhere in the district, no matter how small that event might be. Hendsbee has successfully cultivated a base of support, and it’s not clear if there’s enough growing dissent in District 2 for Gilligan to overcome it. In the 2020 election, Hendsbee won just over half of the vote. Still, his base of support may have eroded due to the recent scandal of the Porters Lake sidewalk, the changing demographics in the district brought on by the pandemic, work-from-home rules and the inexorable march of time.
And Gilligan is a strong contender, a rookie who’s showing some promising policy chops, and as a bonus he’s respected and liked within the broader Eastern Shore community. These advantages, combined with being the only person on the ballot against Hendsbee, mean Gilligan has a good shot of unseating the long-incumbent.
