Survey says: six councillors

Consultant reveals results of CBRM boundary review poll

SYDNEY — Cape Breton Regional Municipality residents had a chance to see some of the preliminary results from an online survey that will help determine the number of councillors and districts for the next eight years.

Only a handful of residents, as well as municipal staff and councillors, attended the public session Monday at Centre 200 as the consultants hired to oversee the mandatory boundary review presented some of their early findings.

John Heseltine, senior planner for Stantec, said so far about 400 people have responded to the survey, with 21.4 per cent indicating the CBRM should have six councillors. Another 17.8 per cent want to stay with the status quo of 12, while 11.7 per cent responded that council should have 15 members.

Phonse MacDonald of Sydney Mines said he thinks fewer councillors would be more effective.

“I think they should decrease it,” said the District 1 resident.

“I figure nine would be good. I think the more fingers you have in the pie, the less you get done because when you have 12 people you end up doing micromanaging, meaning we don’t have to beat things to the nth degree.

“There’s too many for the size of our population.”

Sydney resident Donnie Calabrese also believes council should be smaller.

“I think we’re due for a shakeup in the lay of the land,” said Calabrese, who lives in District 5. “I certainly don’t think we need 12 councillors — I think that there’s a lot of redundancy in the way that council run. I think that the logical rationale is that there will be fewer councillors and there will be perhaps full-time positions so the

representation is not going to change any, ideally.”

FEEDBACK IMPORTANT

CBRM planning director Michael Ruus said getting public feedback is a “huge part of the process,” as the municipality prepares its application to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review board, which must be submitted before the end of the year.

He said the low turnout at the public meeting wasn’t too surprising.

“I think especially since the beginning of the pandemic we’ve seen a strong shift to do online engagement,” he said. “Ultimately, I think for people who want to engage on projects like this, what’s better than doing that from the comfort of their own home? In large part with all of the projects CBRM has undertaken over the last three years now, we’ve seen that in evidence with people strongly participating online.”

Heseltine said the public can still fill out the survey at www.cbrmgovernance.com. His team will then prepare a report for CBRM council outlining options for the number of councillors. The second phase of the process is to define district boundaries, which will feature six public meetings. He expects a final report will be completed in November.