Thursday, 11 December’s Special Meeting was a Regional Plan Public Hearing:
Our twenty-fourth (and final!) council meeting of the year was held on Thursday, 11 December 2025.
The special meeting agenda, report and video recording are linked below.
Halifax Regional Council – Special Meeting – December 11, 2025
“Motion:
That Halifax Regional Council adopt the proposed amendments to the 2014 Regional Municipal Planning Strategy, Secondary Municipal Planning Strategies, Land Use By-laws and to the Regional Subdivision By-law as set out in Attachments and Schedules A, B, C, and D of the staff report dated November 17, 2025.”
For the history on the Regional Plan, please see item 15.1.3 here:
The purpose of this meeting was to hold a public hearing for the regional plan fix. About twenty members of the public came in person and online to share their views. The main themes were rural short term rentals (municipal issue, rejected with Phase 4 of the Regional Plan), the 30-meter inland and coastal watercourse setbacks (municipal issue, one of the reasons the province rejected Phase 4 of the Regional Plan), the 20% ground floor commercial space issue (provincial minimum planning requirement, MPR) and the removal of a requirement for units of different sizes to be built in multiuse buildings (MPR).
I spoke in the meeting about how it was challenging to vote Yes to a plan that included a cap of 20% ground floor space dedicated to commercial space. I was concerned about how this could be detrimental to our vision of building complete communities – ones where people can walk/roll/transit to services rather than drive for every trip. It came to my attention today that my understanding of this MPR may not be quite right, so I spoke to staff today to clarify the MPR.
Here is the Factsheet on the issue. The change leaves the decision on how much ground floor space to rent as commercial space (vs housing units) to the market, rather than as an HRM requirement. The specifics are different for each zone, but in general HRM can require up to 20% commercial space, but not beyond.
It is unclear to me when we can expect phase 5 of the 2025 regional plan to come to council (2-3 years?), but staff indicated that they will come back to us before the full phase 5 is ready (i.e. we are moving away from the phases, and will be continuously improve the plan until the vision for a 1 million resident HRM is complete).
I had to head out to a Library Board meeting before the vote, but I intended to vote Yes on this motion. Moving forward with the Regional Plan is what we need to do to get out of HRM being an interim planning area and enable more specific development projects (none in D7). The vote passed 13 – 2.
Tuesday, 09 December was a regular council meeting:
Our twenty-third council meeting of the year was held on Tuesday, 09 December 2025.
The full meeting agenda, reports and video recording are linked below, as are the draft Minutes.
Halifax Regional Council – December 09, 2025
December 9, 2025 Regional Council Draft Minutes
15.1.3 First Reading of By-law P-1204, an amendment to By-law P-1200, Respecting On-Street Parking Permits
15.3.1 Case HRTG-2025-02222: Request to Include 1530 Oxford Street, Halifax in the Registry of Heritage Properties for the Halifax Regional Municipality
15.3.2 Case H00501 – Collaboration with Universities to Consider Heritage Buildings on Campuses
1. Continue the heritage registration evaluation process for the Dalhousie University-owned buildings listed on Attachment A of the staff report dated October 30, 2025, in accordance with the process initiated by Regional Council on September 29, 2022; and
2. Discontinue consideration of the Dalhousie University-owned buildings listed on Attachment B of the staff report dated October 30, 2025, for heritage registration.”
I took a close look at this one, as both staff and Dal reached out to me in advance. I am comfortable with the staff report, as the work was completed objectively, without consideration of any development plans of Dalhousie. (Most of the buildings on list A and B belong to Dal.) The buildings on the B list have low heritage registration potential. Decisions about which buildings should be on list A or list B were made conservatively.
There are 8 wood buildings (6 properties as some have been joined over the years) on the B list that Dal does intend to demolish to replace with a 213-bed residence for upper-year and graduate student housing. This plan “aligns with municipal, provincial and federal government priorities to increase housing availability”. I confirmed with Dal that these units are indeed needed and are a net benefit to our community, both in operating energy savings and in providing comfortable housing units for older students, which are in short supply on campus.
Dal plans new residence to meet growing student housing needs – Dal News – Dalhousie University
This motion passed on the consent agenda.
15.3.3 Case HRTG-2025-01649: Substantial Alteration to Multiple Municipally Registered Heritage Properties on College and Carlton Streets in Halifax
Budget Committee meeting on 09 December:
We also had a Budget Committee meeting on 09 December.
The meeting agenda, report and video recording are linked below.
Budget Committee – December 09, 2025
“Motion:
That the Budget Committee recommend Halifax Regional Council:
1. Approve the schedule of 2026/27 Advanced Tender Requests as per Attachment 1 of the staff report dated November 17, 2025;
2. Approve the updated Strategic Alignment prioritization weightings as per Attachment 3 of the staff report dated November 17, 2025;
3. Approve the updated Asset Investment Ratio to 70% Asset Renewal and 30% Service Growth with the flexibility to adjust by +/- 10%, as discussed in of the staff report dated November 17, 2025;
4. Suspend the rules of procedure under Schedule 2, the Audit and Finance Standing Committee Terms of Reference, of Administrative Order One, the Procedures of the Council Administrative Order, requiring the Standing Committee to review and make recommendations on proposed changes coming to the Council outside of the annual budget process;
5. Approve a $2,000,000 budget increase to the Wright’s Cove Terminal project account CR000007 to be funded by Housing Accelerator Fund; and
6. Approve the amendment to the 2025/26 Multi-Year Capital Projects schedule, as per Attachment 5 of the staff report dated November 17, 2025.”
Regarding item 1: The D7 news from this meeting was that our south common skate park got the advance tender go-ahead to continue to proceed with the design-build contract in place for $4.3M. There was some debate around advancing this tender due to our tight budget, but most councillors recognized that this is a facility that requires replacement, benefitting residents across HRM.
The vote on Councillor Purdy’s motion to remove the skatepark from the advance tender list failed 13 – 3. I voted No.
Regarding item 2: Strategic Plan | Halifax This plan will be effective 01 April 2026. Council voted at this budget meeting to apply a weighting of 35% to the Moving Better council priority, 30% to Strengthening Communities and 35% to Enabling Prosperity. Staff use these weightings as part of the decision-making process regarding which capital projects to recommend to council at budget time. This was a shift away from the staff recommendation (based on observation of council debate) of 37%, 33% and 30%, respectively. Council voted 12 – 4 in favour of Mayor Fillmore’s motion to make this change. My vote was No, because I would have liked to see Moving Better at a 40+% weighting, or at least stick with staff’s recommendation here.