Steve Adams reflects on almost three decades as a councillor

No more phone and email complaints about municipal snow-clearing work.

No more snarky criticism about living outside his electoral district, and having to publicly defend his personal reasons for doing so.

No more good, bad or ugly report card grades hooked to his city hall job performance, published in The Coast’s regularly entertaining assessment of Halifax council.

No more election campaigns.

Soon, after almost three decades on council, Steve Adams will attend his last formal session of local government and call it a career.

He said in an interview there will be elements of his council job that he’ll certainly miss, and components he won’t.

“I’ll miss the people,” Adams, who’s 59, said. “I’ll miss the staff that I work with, both in the councillors’ office and city hall … and some provincial staff, as well.”

Adams said critics can say what they want about government employees, but “these people work hard – and I mean hard. They’re dedicated.”

No. 1 on his won’t-miss list, which is very short, is social media.

“What a toxic environment,” Adams said. He acknowledged social media use “has its benefits,” but said the harmful aspects far outweigh the positive ones.

Using online platforms to launch personal attacks, he said, is feeble and distasteful.

Married with two children, Adams said there are people “who sit behind their computer, and simply make it their mission to be hateful and miserable. And they don’t care who they hurt, they don’t care what they say.”

Adams said the rumour-and-gossip element of social media use is a real head-shaker. “Generally speaking, what they heard (or read) was someone else who had no clue what they’re talking about, saying the same thing.”

Asked about local projects he’s pleased with – Spryfield-area amenities that came about as a result of his work, city hall’s involvement and the efforts of community members – Adams said such things as new recreation centres, fire halls and playgrounds quickly come to mind.

“Probably the biggest one, and it’s ongoing as well, is the Herring Cove sewer and water” service, he said. “That’s a big project.”

A child of Spryfield, Adams was first elected in 1991, at age 30, when council representatives at the former City of Halifax (prior to municipal amalgamation in 1996) were called aldermen – even if the council member was a woman. It was the year the municipality’s first-and-only female mayor was elected: Moira Ducharme.

By any measure, there was a learning curve Adams managed that rookie year. Three years later, his fellow councillors picked him for the one-year deputy mayor’s post; he was the youngest deputy mayor in the city’s history.

In 2007, Adams, who represents Spryfield-Sambro Loop-Prospect Road, became deputy mayor again – this time under the Halifax Regional Municipality flag.

Like all HRM councillors, elected to represent their constituents and help with various municipal and quality-of-life matters in their communities, Adams has been a member of assorted boards and committees while a council member.

He’s also worked with countless Spryfield-area volunteers, people he’s said have been dedicated to their community.

“My job is so much easier with the help of citizens who donate their time, asking for nothing in return,” Adams once said in a newsletter to residents. The district is home to about 24,000 people.

Unlike many municipal politicians in Nova Scotia, who are retired people perhaps living on a pension (and maybe other income) or might own a small business, Adams worked as a pharmaceutical salesperson during his council career, until 2013.

Councillors currently earn slightly more than $92,000 a year. In June, Adams was one of three who opposed a wage freeze, to go with deep budget cuts the municipality has made because of the financial pressure from COVID-19.

Adams said a wage freeze – a measure voted on and passed in an election year – was premature.

“There is a (remuneration) formula in place,” he told HalifaxToday.ca during the summer. “Why not wait until November, with the new council?”

Adams said “anytime the wage issue arises, it takes away from the main issues on a daily basis.”

Another issue at the tail end of his career that found Adams on the minority side of a council vote – the only dissenter – was his colleagues’ decision to stop the purchase of an armoured vehicle for Halifax Regional Police.

Although council was previously content to buy the military-looking unit from a supplier in Ontario, it cancelled the order in June following media coverage of a white police officer’s killing of an unarmed Black citizen in the U.S., Black Lives Matter demonstrations and other anti-racism protests.

Councillors here received hundreds of emails criticizing the armoured vehicle purchase after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., in May. Many messages also called for the defunding of Halifax’s police department.

The original plan was for the armoured vehicle to be sent to Halifax Regional Police last spring, but delivery had been delayed until the spring of 2021.

Adams didn’t see any reason to change his mind about buying the equipment from Terradyne Armoured Vehicles Inc. of Newmarket, Ont. He said the item would have helped protect police on the job and could have been used as a “rescue vehicle” for citizens.

Anti-vehicle commenters have said the armoured unit is intimidating, potentially harmful to residents and doesn’t belong in a municipal police department.

“It’s like an insurance policy. If we had gotten this, I would hope we’d never have to use it,” said Adams.

Aside from his choice years ago to move to Bedford, yet still represent Spryfield and its environs on Halifax regional council, other municipal matters Adams has been involved in stirred controversy.

For instance, in Harrietsfield, residents have long been dogged by water woes. Some householders have publicly expressed dissatisfaction and frustration with Adams’s handling of the situation.

“I’ve been a target here since this (water problem) started,” he told The Chronicle Herald last year. In July, Adams told HalifaxToday.ca the original issue that affected Harrietsfield – high uranium levels in the water – goes back to the 1980s.

The province trucked water to the community during that decade, he said, adding, the tainted well water matter has been a cross-jurisdictional one involving Halifax Regional Municipality and the provincial government.

A complaint filed a few years ago with the Nova Scotia Office of the Ombudsman alleges, among other things, the province has “mismanaged the adverse environmental impacts” of the approved disposal of large volumes of contaminated waste at a former commercial site near homes with wells.

Last year, politicians announced a provincial/federal project, costing $15 million, to clean up the property that area householders say has been contributing to their tainted water. Remediation work began this summer.

All Nova Scotians expect their water to be clean and safe. Neighbours in Harrietsfield have shown their loss of patience with, and contempt for, government representatives on this basic-necessity issue

“I think there’s been some individuals (who) were trying to find someone to blame, and I’m their guy,” Adams said, of the criticism he has received.

Older readers might recall a news-making, disliked decision he made slightly more than 20 years ago. In July 2000, Halifax regional council voted to phase out property owners’ and householders’ use of pesticides by April 2003.

Adams was one of six council members who opposed a new lawn-chemical bylaw.

(Council had asked the provincial government for permission to regulate pesticide spraying in the Halifax region, and in 1999 received the green light to put a stop to it under the Municipal Government Act.)

Looking back, Adams said there was “a lot of manipulation of information” going on two decades ago. He felt the bylaw was unenforceable, and instead supported a reduction in lawn-chemical use.

Adams said since the municipal edict was put in place, “there have been two convictions under the bylaw. . . . Then, of course, the province put in a ban.”

A municipal politician with 29 years’ service sees a fair number of changes at city hall, such as the swearing in of new mayors, novice councillors voted into office and the hiring of new chief administrative officers.

Adams saw all of the above during his tenure.

Also, his stint coincided with needed technological upgrades done inside the council chamber (which improved public access to council meetings, by way of live broadcasts on the Internet), renovations made to the council room itself, the establishment in 2001 of a poet laureate for the municipality and the contentious discarding of the prayer the mayor and councillors used to recite prior to each council session.

The invocation was replaced with Halifax council members standing for a moment of silent reflection. Council’s religious recitation was dropped following a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling against public prayer at town and city council meetings.

And Adams’s ride on council included multiple debates about what to do about an army of stray cats in HRM, an on-again off-again consideration of urban chicken ownership, new anti-smoking bylaws put in place and the adoption of land-use rules allowing for legal cannabis production in industrial zones and mixed-use agricultural areas.

Cats and chickens didn’t appear to be high on his constituents’ list of priorities, he said. Adams maintained the backyard chicken issue was primarily a media fascination.

Between Jan. 1, 2009, and May 1, 2019, the municipality received hundreds of inquiries about backyard chickens, CBC News reported in July 2019. A city hall staff report last year looked at permitting “egg-laying hens and/or chickens in all residential zones.”

On the feline front, Adams said perhaps four or five people called him about feral cats. “The same ones” would contact him about the issue, he said.

City hall watchers know that for years, Adams was involved in the municipality’s role in the Halifax region’s taxi business. He had his supporters inside the industry and his distractors, too.

But Adams was never unaware of the licensing issues, passenger safety concerns and other serious matters facing local cab drivers and their customers.

The ups and downs of life as a long-lasting municipal councillor can unfortunately include tragedy in his or her community. Adams’s experience includes two fires that absolutely devastated his district.

A house fire last year claimed the lives of seven children from a Syrian refugee family. In 2009, an intense, wind-aided wildfire destroyed homes and damaged others, and displaced about 1,200 people.

The loss of children’s lives in the family home disaster impacted people in this province and across Canada, Adams has said.

“It was horrible, I could hardly keep myself together,” HalifaxToday.ca reported him saying last February, on the one-year anniversary of the 2019 blaze.

Adams moved to Bedford in 2006, he’s said, for love. He had met a woman from Bedford with two children, and he decided to live there rather than ask them to move to his area.

His continued success on voting day showed Adams’s change of address was a nonissue with most voters. In the 2016 civic election – his last – the man retained his seat by easily winning a two-person contest.

The nearly-retired councillor can follow results of the next municipal election from his family’s new home in Middle Sackville, and then turn part of his attention to his favourite National Football League team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Eleven months ago, Adams said he wouldn’t seek re-election. It was time to go.

At an announcement in city hall last October, an emotional Adams said his Spryfield-area district “has been good to me, and I hope in some small measure I’ve been good to you.” Mayor Mike Savage said on Twitter at the time that Adams has put in “many years of dedicated service to his community.”

The race is on for his District 11 spot at the council table, and the track is crowded.

 According to the municipality’s website, there are 12 declared candidates hoping to fill the seat to be vacated by Adams before the Oct. 17 civic election.

His advice for the winner?

“Make sure your phone calls and emails get returned, whether by you or your council coordinator,” Adams said. “Don’t take criticism personally. Don’t hold grudges and always take the high road, as there is far less traffic there.”

Adams was initially sworn in on Nov. 4, 1991; according to the calendar on HRM's website, the last scheduled council meeting prior to the election will be Sept. 29, (or Sept. 30 if necessary).

Regarding job performance, voting results are the ultimate assessment of incumbents seeking re-election to regional council.

As well, The Coast, Halifax’s alternative weekly newspaper, pitches in with an annual report card and subjective comments on council representatives, filed by the paper’s city hall reporter of the day.

Evaluations of Adams have included good and lousy marks, and multiple references to his time divided between municipal business and his pharmaceutical sales career.

The report card has criticized him but also called him “a popular rep,” and noted Adams has not been a “longwinded” speaker at council meetings, like “other councillors (who tend) to grandstand.”

Asked how he felt about those opinionated assessments, Adams sounded less than wistful when he recalled the report cards of yore.

Sitting on the cusp of leaving public life, his own view is this: “It’s reasonable to say that the grades over the past years were predetermined and the authors looked at issues to rationalize them.”

Journalist Jacob Boon, who wrote four council report cards while employed by The Coast, begs to differ.

“The grades were predetermined only by the words and actions of each councillor over the course of a year,” he said via email.

Adams stands by his civic record. And his veteran politician’s skin is probably a little thicker now than it was when he entered local government in 1991.

“If you stick your neck out and aren’t afraid to take a bit of public criticism,” Adams said, “you can do some good stuff.”

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth