Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Editor’s Note: I didn’t have time to cover council properly this week, so today’s short takes will focus on random things from the most recent meeting of the Cape8 Breton Regional Council.

 

Dress Code

District 5 Councilor Eldon MacDonald had himself gift-wrapped for Tuesday night’s meeting:

This works in a political context where being “returned” is a good thing.

I give him full points for eschewing the novelty tie in favor of a full-on novelty blazer — go big or go home, I say.

If only his ideas about the public’s right to know were as advanced as his fashion sense.

 

Bernie’s Bakery

I’m all in favor of preserving old buildings — I think it’s good in terms of remembering the past but also in terms of protecting the environment. It’s more ecological to repair old buildings than to knock them down and add what’s left of them to our ever-growing piles of landfill.

But there’s often something bittersweet about the “heritage” designation for properties in the communities that make up the CBRM. So often they’re places that used to be hives of activity and are now husks of their former selves.

Like Bernie’s Bakery, one of four properties to receive heritage designation during Tuesday’s meeting. A number of councilors reminisced about Bernie’s in its heyday (although District 12 Councilor Lorne Green’s backhanded praise made me seriously doubt his political instincts — he began by announcing he was not a fan of the pizza because it had no meat then added that at one point he had himself been vegan, comments that seemed designed to make both vegans AND carnivores look at him sideways.)

The brief history of the building included in CBRM Heritage Officer Karen Neville’s report to council states:

In 1925, at the age of 14, Bernie Kokoszka Sr. officially began his baking as a baker’s helper at the Oriental Baker in Sydney. Within two years he became head baker, replacing his teacher Felix Depenta, who retired. In 1939, Kokoszka established his own bakery which specialized in European brick hearth baked breads. The original bakery was destroyed by fire in 1954 after which a new bakery was built on Meadow Street. The oven in this bakery was an 18th century model, brick hearth oven designed by Bernie Kokoszka Sr.

Neville  said the building itself, while “simple in design,” merited heritage status for the “significant cultural value” it holds for the community of Whitney Pier. I found a picture of the bakery on the Whitney Pier Through the years Facebook page and the attached comments were all odes to Bernie’s bread and pizza.

 

The building has seen better days, but Tuesday’s discussion ended on a hopeful note. Neville said the applicant (identified during a January 20 Heritage Advisory Committee meeting as Bernie’s granddaughter, Amy Kokoszka, who lives outside the CBRM)  had a “range of ideas” for the property, possibly including a bakery. Neville said Kokoszka’s plans had been derailed by COVID, but not abandoned. She still has “great aspirations” for the property, said Neville, she’s just “not sure of the timeline.”

 

Heritage moments

I went back to that January 20 Heritage Advisory Committee (HAC) meeting to see what had been said about Bernie’s Bakery and I found that Neville had given a great little presentation on the CBRM’s heritage program, which you can watch online.

There’s further information attached to the meeting agenda — including an interesting (if you, like me, are into architecture) section on the types of architectural features typically found on houses in the North End of Sydney.

But what I most appreciated was this slide, which answered a question that had occurred to me while watching the Bernie’s Bakery discussion, namely, how many municipally registered heritage properties are there in CBRM? The answer, in January 2020, was 39:

With the addition of the four properties added on Tuesday night, the total is now 43.

I wish there were a website where you could look each one of them up and see photos and read why they’re significant. (That sounds like a job for a summer student, doesn’t it?)

 

New Aberdeen

Al Moore of the New Aberdeen Revitalization Affordable Housing Society gave a presentation on the group’s activities before asking for the transfer of a Seventh Street lot owned by CBRM for a nominal sum.

In her Issue Paper to council on the subject, Property Manager Sheila Kolanko noted that the society has:

…developed a working relationship with the CBRM with an understanding that if the Society entice[s] families to invest in residential development with the New Aberdeen area, CBRM would entertain conveying surplus lands to the Society for $1.00.

In the case of the property in question  — PID 15440001 — the society said it had secured a deposit from a buyer who lives in CBRM, wants to relocate to the New Aberdeen area and is prepared to pay $3,000 for the lot. In an October 30 letter to council requesting the transfer of the property, society chair Jennifer Ludlow said the asking price will cover the society’s costs and any leftover money will be used for “community events or projects.”

Moore highlighted some such events and projects, including a community garden, New Aberdeen Days, regular visits by the New Dawn Good Food Bus, and a plan to create a green space with a trellised structure to serve as a venue for community gatherings, wedding photo shoots, etc.

Council approved the land transfer, with the proviso that a building permit for the lot be sought within the year.

 

Expenses

CFO Jennifer Campbell reviewed the municipality’s hospitality, expense and audit committee policies in accordance with the MGA, which states that following a municipal election, council has until end-January to review these policies and either readopt them or amend and adopt them.

Reading the travel and expense rules is eye-opening, if you figure that each rule was introduced because of something that was once permitted or that someone once tried to get away with.

For example, the municipality feels the need to spell out that if you go to a conference and a lunch is provided you cannot claim a per diem for lunch.

Or if you stay at a hotel while traveling on municipal business and bring along a friend or family member, the municipality will not cover your guest’s expenses.

Or if you fly on municipal business, you can’t fly business class unless the flight is over nine hours (China!) and upgrades are a personal expense “unless [a] physical requirement.” (Arthritis!)

Or if you drive to, say, Halifax, on municipal business, the mileage you claim “cannot exceed cost of round trip airfare at economy rate, plus car rental/taxi fare.”

And finally, if you buy clothes, get a parking ticket or undergo medical treatment while traveling on municipal business, you cannot expense any of it.

People need to be told this?

Council didn’t vote on the policies as presented Tuesday night, they’re to digest them over Christmas and come back and vote during the regular January meeting.

 

Sportsplex

This discussion seemed to go on for about three days but Tom Ayers reported that it actually took 49 minutes, so I must believe him.

District 6 Councilor Glenn Paruch put a motion on the agenda to:

…direct staff to prepare an Issue Paper on a proposed study regarding the possibility of establishing a new recreation facility in CBRM with two courts (for court sports such as basketball and volleyball, and for senior activities), and that the study include costing and possible funding sources.

This means we’ve now moved from a world where we do studies about projects to a world where we do Issue Papers about studies about projects. I don’t think it’s a trend I can get behind, I had hoped we’d reduce the degrees of separation between proposals and reality rather than increasing them.

While Paruch’s initial motion named no particular location for such a facility, it soon emerged that he’d discussed the plan with the CAO who’d pushed for attaching it to Centre 200 in Sydney. It further emerged, when District 5 Councilor Eldon MacDonald joined the discussion, that there has been previous discussion about attaching such a facility to Centre 200, due to the “excess heat” produced by the arena, some of which is provided to the adjacent casino.

I remembered this “excess heat” because it had been cited in January 2017 by then-Mayor Cecil Clarke, when he took everyone by surprise by proposing we build the new Central Library next to Centre 200.

Other councilors were generally supportive of the idea of a new sports facility, but didn’t necessarily want to see it built in Sydney, excess heat or no excess heat. So the motion they eventually passed listed Centre 200 as the “preferred site,” without, in theory, closing the door to other sites, but if this goes the way things usually go in the CBRM, it will soon be forgotten that they had once been open to considering other sites. I’m calling it now.

A very good point was raised re: the use of sports facilities in schools, and it appears that community groups in CBRM do not have access to our publicly owned and operated schools.

This struck me as odd because I remembered, distinctly, during a COVID-19 briefing, Dr. Robert Strang talking about the after-hours use of school facilities. I went back to check this and sure enough, after the November 3 update I wrote:

Strang was asked repeatedly about the decision — announced today — to allow after-hours access to school gyms in light of the rising number of COVID cases in the province.

Strang reiterated that there does not appear to be any community spread in the province before explaining that his department has been working with the Department of Education “since we opened the schools” to put in place the necessary protocols and hire the necessary cleaning staff to open school gyms to groups like Brownies and Cubs and sports leagues and arts groups and it “just took us some time to get the right things in place.”

That sounds to me like school gyms should be fair game for kids looking to play “court sports” in Cape Breton, so why isn’t it happening? (That’s a rhetorical question for now, but I hope to revisit the subject with an answer before the holidays.)

Finally, a spectator (you know who you are) wrote to remind me that something important was completely left out of this discussion and if you want to find out what that important thing is, make sure to read next week’s Spectator!

I love a cliffhanger, don’t you?