[adrotate banner=”188″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[adrotate banner=”127″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Housing and affordability top issue<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason hearing about across HRM<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n WAVERLEY:<\/strong> Three main topics are the clear concerns of the majority of people in the Halifax Regional Municipality being heard by Mayoral candidate Waye Mason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason has visited the Fall River\/Waverley area a few times, stopping in at community events and on Aug 2 sitting down for an interview with The Laker News over fish and chips at the Waverley Legion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was asked what the three top issues are that he\u2019s hearing about. To no surprise, the top issue is housing and affordability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think you see people who are excited that the city has changed and has more energy and is growing, but are worried that it’s not working for them,” said Mason.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou definitely hear that from the farthest points in rural HRM to the heart of downtown Halifax. People want to talk about housing and affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”6″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”31″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was asked about the importance of getting out to areas like Waverley; Fall River; and Musquodoboit Valley, why he has made it key to the early days of his campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason spoke of when he was first elected 12 years ago and was on the Halifax Public Library board. He had only been to four of them, but there\u2019s 14. He went to them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said housing and affordability is an issue everywhere across HRM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEverybody’s talking about that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s different in rural than it is in in town. Like you’re seeing the farther out you get, the more it’s somebody who wants to work at the hospital or someone wants to work at the high school and is in their mid-twenties. They used to be married and they were going to buy a house and start having kids right away in Upper Musquodoboit, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow they want to rent a place and try it out. There’s a different kind of housing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason said the housing issues are complex and different in every community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”126″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”34″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for the Fall River area, the issues vary vastly from within city limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn top of that, specific issues out here, traffic and transit are a big piece,\u201d he said. \u201cAs municipalities grow, traffic gets worse. That’s true. We’re going to see traffic continue to increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut the question is how do you manage that traffic? There’s plenty of places where we’re driving around where we’re thinking, wow, this intersection isn’t designed properly, it should be a roundabout, the signals don’t work like they should, that kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason spoke about working with Deputy Mayor Cathy Deagle Gammon to make the motion to have when the Aerotech Connector is done to have the bus stop in the core of Fall River, instead of stopping up at the park and ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTransit and traffic are a big deal on a very local level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He said two other topics are issues he\u2019s heard a lot about\u2014the Carr Farm and its proposed treated effluent going into Lake Thomas and the Ingram Drive development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Carr Farm and the province’s special planning area that enabled the development at Ingram Drive where the second exit had not been allowed by CN over the tracks, there’s a real concern here, as there is in a number of other areas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Mason will be volunteering to make pancakes at the Pancake Breakfast on Aug. 18 during the Keloose Festival at the LWF Hall. He said he will be sticking around there if any residents had questions they would like to ask him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”169″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”148″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mason also thinks the tax structure needs to be reviewed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think there needs to be a real good hard look at what the general rate is, and it needs to be adjusted to reflect if you don’t have the same level of services coming to you,” he said. \u201cI’m going to commit to addressing that, changing that and making those changes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He believes the growth HRM has seen, and the energy is something most people support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost people are excited that we’re no longer seeing all the businesses moving to Moncton and all the kids going to Fort McMurray,\u201d said Mason. \u201cThat has changed, and we have a new swagger and energy. But to make that work for everyone, we now need to harness that energy and that economic opportunity, and we need to use that to make sure that nobody’s left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat means we need to make decisions more quickly than we have in the past. These issues are present and scary for people who are facing homelessness or the senior making the decision about, do I eat or do I take my medicine, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe can’t solve it all at the municipal level. The province and the feds are going to have to be really involved, but what we can do, we should do as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea is you sit down with everybody, you come up with that plan and in the very first council meeting, you deliver a strategic plan with timelines and deadlines, and you get to work right away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this scenario there would be no asking for staff reports or no working toward consensus, Mason said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the things that Tim Houston says that I agree with is we need to do things faster,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the city needs to go faster.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”105″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”93″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [adrotate banner=”188″] [adrotate banner=”127″] Housing and affordability top issue Mason hearing about across HRM WAVERLEY: Three main topics are the clear concerns of the majority of people in the Halifax Regional Municipality being heard by Mayoral candidate Waye Mason. Mason has visited the Fall River\/Waverley area a few times, stopping in at community events and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,957],"tags":[1610,121,6988,7154,159,6980],"class_list":["post-47429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","tag-cathy-deagle-gammon-2","tag-hrm","tag-hrm-mayor","tag-hrm-municipal-election","tag-waverley-legion","tag-waye-mason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n