The CBRM will borrow from the province to fund a property-tax deferral program to assist residents and businesses “significantly impacted” by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first thing you must understand about this program — and you know this is vital because it appeared on the very first slide presented toRead More

I do not know what to make of Monday’s “pretend” budget-cutting workshop but I suspect it may be viewed in some quarters as a poor use of a cash-strapped municipality’s resources. To recap: as a prelude to the actual budget process this year, CBRM council held a session on MondayRead More

On the Waterfront (Not) The Sydney Waterfront District Association has changed its name back to the Sydney Downtown Development Association after experimenting with a rebranding for the past few years. (Cape Breton Post) I find this really funny because I’m the kind of person who finds rebranding failures funny. I’mRead More

While writing last week about the CBRM Regional Enterprise Network or CBRM REN it suddenly struck me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t really know what a Regional Enterprise Network was, so I decided I’d better educate myself. I began by looking up the existing CapeRead More

Now that Business Cape Breton (BCB) has been consigned to the ash heap of history, it’s time to meet the CBRM’s new sidekick in economic development — the Cape Breton Partnership. Because it seems there is to be a Cape Breton Regional Municipality Regional Enterprise Network (REN) and the CapeRead More

Our port “developers” — Sydney Harbor Investment Partners (SHIP) formerly Harbour Port Development Partners (HPDP) — have been engaged in promoting the Port of Sydney as a “deep water, transshipment and intermodal mega hub” capable of handling Ultra-Large Container Vessels (ULCV) since 2014 (although we only made it official inRead More

Editor’s Note: Mayor Cecil Clarke’s contention that discussing council remuneration in camera (and treating elected officials as “personnel”) is a longstanding CBRM practice sent me scuttling to the “CBRM Mayor and Council” clippings file at the McConnell library, to research some of the remuneration (and related) issues council has dealt withRead More

CBRM Council approved a raise for itself last night in response to the federal government’s decision to end a tax break that allowed elected municipal officials to collect one-third of their salaries tax free. Councilors did it without a word of debate or discussion, presumably because they’d already debated andRead More

In recent published comments, Mayor Cecil Clarke suggested that because the Municipal Government Act (MGA) was ignored in the past it is perfectly acceptable for our current elected representatives to continue thumbing a collective nose at a statutory mandate to follow the rules. What the Mayor and Council repeatedly didRead...

There are two ways to look at CBRM Council’s decision, taken during Monday’s General Committee meeting, to increase the mayor and councilors’ salaries to compensate for the federal government’s decision (contained in that gripping bestseller Budget 2017: Building a Strong Middle Class) to eliminate a tax break that allowed themRead More