Halifax Regional Council is set to meet on Tuesday and there’s a number of topics up for debate.
Council will have the task of considering staff reports on traffic calming measures, as well as renaming a few of the city’s buildings.
Here are some of the things that regional council will examine at its May 8 meeting.
Parachute team performance
First up for council is a request for a performance from the SkyHawks, the Canadian Armed Forces Parachute Team, during this year’s Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo.
According to the request — submitted by Jennie King, the Tattoo’s managing director — the goal of the performance is to supplement the show.
King writes that the parachute show will occur on Canada Day over the Halifax Commons, with the first official jump at approximately 11:30 a.m.
The show is predicted to last between 18 and 25 minutes.
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Traffic Calming
Halifax council is set to examine multiple recommendations from municipal staff that will allow them to implement traffic calming features in the future.
The debate follows a move by council last October to remove the need to poll residents on traffic calming measures — such as speed bumps — and to allow the municipality to put them in place only if necessary.
Staff has four new recommendations that came as a result of the work they carried out in October.
They recommend removing the requirement for a street to apply for exemption to a transit route, as staff want the ability to carry out a traffic calming assessment as a whole, rather than on a street-by-street basis.
If council approves the change, streets eligible to apply for traffic calming measures will be modified so that only those”greater than 150 metres in length” can apply. This, staff reasoned, will allow the city to better allocate its resources as streets shorter than 150 metres are unlikely to allow vehicles to reach and maintain high speeds.
Staff have also recommended that new criteria for school zones be added to the initial traffic calming assessment process, as most “jurisdictional traffic calming policies” didn’t include a detailed approach.
Staff say that there are approximately 100 locations throughout the municipality that they have provisionally ranked for potential traffic calming measures.
They’re now asking council to dismiss roughly 40 of the locations from their list of streets.
Staff say the streets that would be removed have low speeds, low volumes and limited or no collision history, making traffic calming untenable in those locations.
Council are also being asked to implement additional cautions to those applying for traffic calming measures. The new information would inform applicants that even if all requirements for traffic calming are met, installation may still not be possible because of site-specific constraints.
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Commemorative names
Perhaps the biggest topic at regional council’s meeting on Tuesday will see the possible addition of Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy and Port Wallace to the city’s list of commemorative names.
Grand Chief Sylliboy was the first Mi’kmaq elected as Grand Chief and was the first to fight for treaty recognition in the Supreme Court of Canada after being arrested in 1929 for hunting out of season.
On February 16, 2017, Sylliboy was given a posthumous pardon and apology for his decade-old hunting conviction by Premier Stephen McNeil.
It was only the second time that a pardon and apology was granted in Nova Scotia, with the first being for Viola Desmond in 2010.
The application for Sylliboy indicated consideration in the renaming of Cornwallis Park, which had previously held the statue of Edward Cornwallis before it was removed earlier this year.
That portion of the proposal may cause some fractitious debate and at least one councillor, Matt Whitman, has publicly stated he won’t vote in support of the motion.
Staff is recommending Port Wallace be added to the list as a potential street name in the Dartmouth neighbourhood that bears the name, and to clarify a previous spelling mistake.
Port Wallace was named after Michael Wallace who served as a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature and president of the Shubenacadie Canal Company.
The city will also look to fix a number of typographical errors it has made in the past, such as officially renaming Admirals Cove Park to Admiral Cove Park and renaming Mainland Commons to Mainland Common.
Staff have recommended that the council accept the renaming of Pleasant Drive Park to Petpeswick Lake Park, Prince Arthur Junior High School Park to Dartmouth South Academy Park and Terence Bay Road Park to Terence Bay River Park.
Council will also consider a recommendation that would rename the Village Plaza – Musquodoboit Harbour Fitness Lifestyle Centre to Musquodoboit Harbour Recreation Centre and Library.
They’ll also consider renaming the playfield on Upper Governor Street in North Preston to the Arnold D. Johnson Playfield, as well as renaming the trail within the Dartmouth Harbour East Recreation Campus the Spectacle Lake Trail.
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Licensing puppies
Councillor Tim Outhit has requested a staff report that would examine the possibility of licensing dogs under the age of 6 months.
Outhit writes in his request that a dog has to be spayed or neutered to receive a discount to municipal licensing fees. However, since puppies have to be at least six months old to have the procedure completed, they aren’t able to comply.
Outhit says it’s something that runs opposite of the intended goal of the discount program — to encourage owners to license their dogs.
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