Too few council seats would not save money:Dalrymple

By Yvette d'Entremont
The Weekly News
Whether or not regional council agrees to cut the number of councillors from 23 to 20, Coun. Barry Dalrymple hopes the recommendation to give more power to community councils is approved.
The Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank councillor served on the district boundary review committee. The committee's recommendation appeared on last week's regional council agenda, but discussion on the issue was deferred until Aug. 3.
Dalrymple brought forward the motion to cut the number of councillors by three, which is one of the recommendations brought to regional council by the review committee.
"I would have gone smaller. Councillor Rankin said 18, we debated it, and it was defeated. I made a motion to the next logical step, which was 20," Dalrymple said. "It passed by one. When people say we should cut (council) to 15 or 16, it wouldn't fly with the committee much less council."
Provincial guidelines require the committee to ensure each district's population numbers are within 10 per cent of each other. Dalrymple said his district sits at 21,000, while some urban districts have 14,000 to 15,000 residents.
"We are running outside the provincial mandate. If we went to 20 councillors and eliminated for example two urban and one suburban councillor, it would force some boundary lines to change," he said. "It wouldn't bring them up to 21,000, but maybe more in the 18,000 or 19,000 range so that it's legal. We have to satisfy the requirement of the law. Anything else is not going to fly."
Dalrymple believes adjusting the numbers would make it more fair for residents and councillors.
"There are more urban (councillors) than rural and suburban and that's not fair (given the numbers)," he said. "To me that's one of the biggest flaws in the HRM."
One committee recommendation Dalrymple is pushing for is assigning more responsibility to the community councils. He believes giving them more local responsibilities would dramatically increase HRM's effectiveness, ensuring only the larger issues appear before regional council.
"Any localized items should go to community councils, absolutely not to regional council," he said. "This is as important or even more important of an issue than the size of council."
As an example, he pointed to the $50,000 scroll sign erected at the new Fall River recreation centre. After a short period of use, it came to the attention of municipal officials that the sign can't be used because it contravenes HRM's sign bylaws.
"There are wheel signs allowed everywhere, but my residents hate them. We like our scroll signs, not the portable ones. That's the kind of thing that should be up to community councils," he said. "Too often city rules are being forced on rural residents. We can be one HRM and have the same overall laws, but we don't have to be clones. We can have slightly different bylaws in different areas of the municipality."
Bringing the number of councillors down to 12 or 15 also wouldn't be a cost-saving measure, Dalrymple argued. He said while some larger cities may have 12 councillors, each councillor has three or four support people.
"We (currently) have one that we're sharing between three or four councillors," he said. "You eliminate 10 councillors, you hire 20 support people. That's not a cost-saving."
Dalrymple's not alone in expressing concerns that councillors were responsible for deciding the potential fate of their own jobs. The issue was also raised at some of the public meetings held earlier this year.
"I don't think we should be in charge of this process, no," he said.
"The last time (HRM) did this it went through the process, they recommended a slightly smaller council, and it immediately got thrown out."

ydentremont@hfxnews.ca