Council's Decision "Insensitive to Communities" Board Rules

Today the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board published its decision on the number of districts that Kings County will have in the upcoming October election. 

It ruled against council's proposal of eight districts in favour of the consultant's recommendation of nine districts. 

If the board's ruling stands Centreville, Meadowview and Aldershot will be included in a new District 2 (the light blue area highlighted in the map below). This new District 2 will also include North Kentville (approximately 1,686 voters) in addition to 2,413 voters from the old District 3. Halls Harbour and District will become part of the district to the west (shown below in green).

The ruling lists many reasons for why council's decision was rejected including that: "The Board saw the eight polling district scenario developed by the CAO as being almost entirely insensitive to communities of interest." 

The full ruling can be accessed here: Kings Decision but here is some of what the ruling contains.

The board commented at length on why it ruled against council's proposal. Interestingly, several sections question the motivation of those voting for the CAO's recommendation and how the recommendation came to be:

"...whether Deputy Warden Hirtle told Mr. MacEwan to prepare a new scenario after the Stantec Report was first presented to Council on November 17th (as Mr. Hirtle, in effect, said he did), or whether he did not (as Mr. MacEwan says) - Mr. MacEwan did immediately begin preparing Alternate 8 within hours after Council (including Mr. Hirtle) first saw the Stantec Report." The report notes that the Alternate 8 district proposal provides the Deputy Warden will a better scenario for his district in the upcoming election. 

"With respect to the matter of polling districts it appears from the minutes, and other evidence before the Board, that Stantec’s recommended nine-polling district scenario was not presented to Council to be debated and voted upon. Instead, Deputy Warden Hirtle and Councillor Atwater simply moved the adoption of Mr. MacEwan’s Alternate 8.That motion was carried by a vote of 6:5, with Warden Diana Brothers, Deputy Warden Brian Hirtle, and Councillors Atwater, Lloyd, Best and Ennis voting in favour. The five councillors voting in opposition were Councillors MacQuarrie, Muttart, Raven, Bishop, and Winsor."

The Board also stated "several concerns with the Alternate 8 scenario assembled by Mr. MacEwan." These included:

• "In response to questioning from the Board, Mr. MacEwan testified that this was his first attempt at developing a municipal boundary scenario. He had no prior experience, whatsoever, in conducting such an exercise. He had left his private legal practice four years earlier to become the Municipality’s CAO, his first venture into municipal administration."
• "Further, Mr. MacEwan stated that he developed the Alternate 8 scenario on his own, without any input from anyone else. By his own admission, he intentionally avoided attending any of the three public consultation meetings held by Stantec. If he had attended those meetings, he would have had some opportunity to learn the views of the public with respect to the various scenarios."
• "Moreover, Mr. MacEwan created his suggested model in the matter of a couple of hours, with the primary emphasis on polling districts having both rural and urban components, and simply moving blocks of electors in one direction or the other to address relative parity of voting power. In his testimony, he added that creating districts with urban and rural parts would help balance the geographic size of the districts."
• "Indeed, while in the Board’s experience the task of drawing municipal boundary scenarios has, typically, proven to be very challenging for both municipal administrators and consultants alike, Mr. MacEwan testified that he was confident he could develop his own scenario, and communicated this fact to Mr. Heseltine, even before he embarked on the work. As a result, upon leaving the Valley Waste meeting in the morning, he 'went back to the office and just rearranged the data sheets'. In his view [stating]...'it’s not difficult to move things around. Because you can only move numbers around that are close to each other. ... It’s not complicated...'"
• "...Having reviewed all of the evidence, the Board finds that Mr. MacEwan’s Alternate 8 scenario seriously offends, in at least two ways, one of the important requirements of s. 368(4) of the MGA, that being to reflect communities of interest in the municipal unit."