In last week’s Inverness Oran, April MacDonald wrote about a significant issue that should concern everyone living in Nova Scotia — municipal by-laws, more specifically, municipal by-laws concerning agricultural land and land use. Many people are unaware of the by-laws that need to be created because things are changing inRead More

I wrote about Nova Scotia’s Capped Assessment Program (CAP) for municipal property taxes at some length back in 2017, drawing heavily on a report on the subject commissioned by the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM) which would dearly love to throw the CAP high in the air, like MaryRead More

The first episode of the new season of CBRM Council was three hours long, featured a bunch of new characters and offered up at least one new twist in an old plot. It seems to have been filmed in a black light theater although, sadly, none of the councilors tookRead More

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