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Questions for Cecil Clarke and Rankin MacSween

Tom Urbaniak wants some answers from CBRM’s two mayoral candidates.

Thursday’s CBRM mayoral debate will highlight a dilemma: Do we go for quick wins or push for big national and provincial policies to stop decline?

Why not both? That’s why I would ask incumbent Cecil Clarke: How will you scale up? And to challenger Rankin MacSween: How will you scale down?

This could be a great debate. Both candidates are smart, experienced, dignified and hard working. They know how to engage with others.

But will they work from 10 feet up or 10,000 feet up?

Clarke has a pragmatic platform document, “100 More Positive Changes for CBRM.” It’s an agenda beyond the Port of Sydney, a major file but where the future is still uncertain. The platform is a checklist of doable things that he has heard while out and about – like more street-line painting, more support for local events, specific transit improvements, continued debt reduction, projects to boost local artists, reorganized municipal committees and more effective ways to welcome newcomers.

Clarke pledges to “ensure we leave the municipality better than we found it.”

MacSween is setting his sights on ending child poverty and a 10-per cent, propertytax rate reduction. He wants to fund the Cape Breton Partnership to stabilize our population. He wants to prioritize road repairs. He insists, “I’m ready to break this vicious economic cycle and create a vibrant community again.”

Alongside the useful immediate steps, I would be interested to hear more from Clarke about a new deal for CBRM to stem the decay and decline. Previously, he talked about a “CBRM Charter.” If not that, could there be a “special economic zone” (a much broader concept than the recent Foreign Trade Zone Point), a “region of refuge” or a global hub for adult education?

Clarke promises to partner with the United Way on a fall summit on child poverty. What will the CBRM take into it? For example, could we replicate the success of the pilot Northside Youth Inclusion Program (YIP)? How can we make our libraries youth opportunity hubs? How could people have the option to leave money in their wills to a legacy fund for local children’s activities? How do we get children and youth involved in revitalizing and re-imagining neighbourhoods?

MacSween, for his part, should work on more details; he needs a road map and spreadsheet. How is he going to make up for lost revenue from the tax cut, especially if CBRM almost doubles its spending on road repairs, as he proposes? How is he going to persuade Ottawa and Halifax to make the major policy shifts needed to end child poverty? It will take more than redirecting provincial lottery funds, an idea MacSween has put forward.

For both candidates, for any municipal candidates, I think key words in this election are purpose, presence, place, partnerships and the public purse.

“Purpose” means articulating a vision of a healthy community and an actual plan to get there.

But people also expect a mayor to be constantly on the ground (“presence”) – to celebrate and to grieve with them, to really hear them. It means radical transparency in all operations and agreements.

By “place” I am referring to regenerating main streets and historic areas, protecting and extending public access to waterfronts, promoting public art, tax incentives to encourage development in dying cores, disincentives for building scattered subdivisions (expensive to service) and a streamlined tax-sale system to get derelict properties into productive, taxpaying hands.

”Partnerships” means using the “soft power” (the influence and democratic legitimacy) of the mayor’s office to others to do specific things. It means having lots of shovel-ready plans and positioning the municipality to jump in as soon as new funding programs are rolled out.

That brings us to the “public purse.” A culture of frugality, and modesty in expenses, will ensure the moral authority to make tough decisions.

I hope that tomorrow’s debate between two serious and dedicated Cape Breton leaders is more than entertainment. I hope it brings out “the better angels of our nature.” Right now, our struggling region and our people need all the creativity and energy we can find.