PORT HAWKESBURY: Town officials here are gearing up for their first crack at hosting the annual island-wide gathering of Cape Breton’s five municipal councils.
Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton confirmed at the January 9 regular town council meeting that Port Hawkesbury will serve as the host municipality for the fifth annual conference, which traditionally takes place in November at The Gaelic College in St. Ann’s. Originally slated to occur this past November, the upcoming event was pushed ahead in light of last October’s municipal elections, with April and November now in the mix as potential dates.
Speaking to reporters following the council meeting, Chisholm-Beaton expressed hope that Port Hawkesbury’s first turn at hosting its four fellow Cape Breton municipalities would see a greater emphasis on the so-called “hallway conversations” that have occurred away from the conferences’ main sessions.
“You get to talk to your fellow councillors, to your neighbours, and they talk about what’s going on in their municipalities and how they’re responding, and they’re asking questions like, ‘Has that happened to you?’ and ‘What did you do to respond to that?’ So that’s where the real learning and the real connecting happens,” she declared.
“I’m hoping that, as the host of the Cape Breton conference, that we’ll have more of an opportunity to maybe make that the focus, so that municipalities can stand up and tell us about what’s going on in the municipalities, what are some wins, what are the challenges, what are some of the bigger projects that we can look at together and create some action pieces going forward.”
While the Atlantic Gateway project stands out among the collaborative efforts that Chisholm-Beaton hopes to bring up at this year’s conference, she pledged to consult with the rest of Port Hawkesbury Town Council to put together an agenda that reflects the town’s priorities while welcoming all others to share their views.
“I’m hoping that the conference will be able to give our fellow municipalities more of a voice, instead of just having presenters come in and kind of speak down, and all of us sitting around the table as councillors, mayors and wardens, just absorbing information,” the mayor added.
“I’m sure some of the topics we will be looking at are, perhaps, shared services, some of the challenges we face as an island, and what are some examples of shared services that are already present and what have we learned from that?”