What can I say, 2010 was a good year for me and for my little corner of the web here on Halifax Politics dot ca.
The biggest thing for me this year was the end of my ten year reign as the El Supremo and visionary of the Halifax Pop Explosion. I went to the Halifax Pop Explosion board in 2009 and said “folks, this is my last year” and we put an 18 month plan in place to get HPX ready for life after Waye, and life with a full time staff person.
So the year started with the HPX job posting, but in January, the first post on the site was about the aborted HRM “tax reform“, something that would have cut taxes for the rich and jacked them up for everyone else. In February discussion of this and other issues in the social media world and local message boards lead to a growing relationship with TIm Outhit, HRM Councilor and proponent of light rail in Halifax.
In March, a great present to the departing boss man of HPX, we won the ECMA for best music festival. In April we hired my man Jonny Stevens to run the festival, and I walked out head held high!
April also saw me published, both in Halifax Magazine about HRMs petty bureaucracy, and in the Herald about the silliness of taxpayers funding private businesses putting on concerts on the Common.
May was light, as I had trouble typing due to a bit of cubital tunnel forcing me off work for a week. Still hurting, it took my old friend Carole Olsen at the HRSB to pull me off the DL, and get me back in action. It is still galling to me that the elected Board accepted her excuse and let her continue as head honcho of the biggest school board in Atlantic Canada.
The issues around Caribbean Twist and its zoning lead to my first “Investigation” post, where I actually went out and pretended to be a reported and actually research what I was writing about. The post was well received, but I learned that really people want short posts… never ever post 2000 words, when you could do 500 a day over four days!
September saw issues with poor Councillor Uteck and miss-understanding of new and social media lead to her to complain about a parody twitter account.
The last half of 2010 had a lot of posts about WTCC2 proposal, the lack of transparency and accountability around the decision give a private developer $160 million (ish). I wrote about the issues with it in July, wrote about it again in October and November.
The year closed with the post that has had the most response I have ever gotten, about education and the effect cuts the Dexter government have proposed.
I think what I am most proud of for this site in 2010 the article “Why We Fight.” This article is a summary of the reason why progressive, caring, engaged young people in Halifax are rightly concerned and skeptical when big government and big business make deals behind closed doors.
I wonder what 2011 will bring?