In the Media

As part of its Urban Futures initiative, AIMS is studying how municipalities can become more efficient and provide better service. Using Saint John, New Brunswick as an illustration, AIMS will reflect on how small and medium size municipalities can improve the quality of services for residents and value for money for taxpayers. In this article in the Saint John Telegraph Journal, reporter Mac Trueman examines the AIMS project and objectives.

There’s a famous story about a factory where, every day, a gun was fired from the main administrative building signalling that it was time for lunch. A management consultant asked the man who fired the gun how he knew when it was actually noontime. He said that he was guided by the town clock, visible out his window at the town hall across the road. The consultant went across the road and asked the town manager how he knew his clock gave the right time. “It’s always right by the noon gun” was the reply. In other words, none of the so-called “experts” actually knew what time it was at all. But they were convinced that because they only listened to each other’s unfounded prejudices they must be right. This parable is strangely applicable to the HRM and their current campaign against so-called “urban sprawl”.

According to AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, writing in the Halifax Herald, “snowstorms can be powerful politically because they focus attention on something everybody understands: cities keep the streets open and people are harmed and angered when they can’t get where they need to go. Scent and lawn chemical bans, long debates about whether cats should be leashed and absurd foot-dragging on cleaning up the hurricane damage in Point Pleasant Park merely leave most people bemused. But no one is unaffected when overnight your street is turned into an impassable bog and remains that way for day. Both the Chronicle Herald and Times & Transcript versions are included.