HALIFAX—A Halifax councillor wants to break the law and appoint, rather than elect, a new councillor for Lower Sackville in a bid to save $250,000.

At a special meeting Friday, the audit and finance committee recommended council withdraw $250,000 from the municipal elections reserve bank account to pay for a special election in Lower Sackville.

Councillor Matt Whitman, the only one who voted against the committee’s motion, believes the municipality should find an interim replacement for councillor Steve Craig, instead of holding the election.

“To spend a quarter of a million dollars to replace an $88,000 councillor doesn’t make good financial sense to me,” Whitman said during Friday’s meeting, which was recorded and posted online.

Craig won a provincial byelection in June, taking the long-time NDP riding of Sackville-Cobequid for the Progressive Conservatives and moving down the street to Province House.

Although council hasn’t approved a date for the District 15 election, the vote is expected in October, about a year before the next general election.

Whitman suggested hiring a recruiter to find a replacement for Craig, deputizing a former councillor to handle the duties, or sharing the duties between himself and three councillors in nearby districts for a year.

“I’m sure that they’ll say that the legislation and the charter and all that stuff says that we need to do this,” Whitman said.

“But it seems like there’s other times that we are flexible in how we do things and I think that if we found a more financially responsible way of doing this it would be in our best interest.”

Officials told Whitman that the municipality is in fact bound by legislation.

“The selection of a councillor to represent a district is made by the electorate within that district, so this is the process,” municipal solicitor John Traves told the committee.

“It is something that we are bound by legislation and it’s not something council can override,” said municipal clerk Kevin Arjoon, citing Section 13 of the provincial Municipal Elections Act.

Whitman repeatedly asked what penalty the municipality would face for contravening the law, and whether it would be more than $250,000.

“The electorate within the district are entitled to representation by a municipal councillor,” Traves explained.

A citizen could force the municipality to properly fill the council seat in court, and Traves said the municipality would have no defence. Traves also said he can’t advise councillors on how to break the law.

Whitman made a motion for the four neighbouring councillors to represent the district for the year, and then for the committee to move the meeting in camera, meaning behind closed doors, to discuss it.

“That first motion to move representation by unelected members of the district would be out of order. It’s contrary to law. The move to go in camera is up to the committee,” Traves said.

No councillor seconded Whitman’s motion to go in camera.

Mayor Mike Savage said it would be undemocratic to appoint a councillor.

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“There’s a lot of wonderful things about democracy but it’s not free. It’s won by the sacrifice of people who fight for democracy and it also costs money to have democracy,” he said.

“To suggest we recruit or appoint ... this is not a totalitarian government.”

Savage noted that deputy mayor Tony Mancini was first elected in a special election in January 2016, just nine months before a general election.

“The turnout wasn’t great, and I don’t anticipate that the turnout will be great here, but people will have the opportunity to vote for who they wish. That’s democracy,” he said.

That special election, held in Dartmouth’s District 6, carried a lower price tag of $170,000.

Savage said he wished this next election was cheaper, and Councillor Lorelei Nicoll said she had some “sticker shock” at the $250,000 price tag.

Arjoon explained that, following a vote by council in 2017, this election will be conducted by electronic voting only, which means electors will only be able to vote online or by telephone. Polling stations will use electronic ballots.

It’s a first for the municipality, but it carries extra privacy audit costs. And in previous elections, technology costs were budgeted under the municipal information and communications technology (ICT) department, not elections.

“What’s happening now is that the true costs of the election are being put under the elections cost centre,” municipal elections co-ordinator Patricia Smith said in an interview on Monday.

“Instead of ICT kind of covering, if you will, the expenses for election-related technology, that technology is, rightly so, being allocated to the elections cost centre. That really accounts for a large increase.”

There’s also inflation since 2016, and a privacy impact assessment that is budgeted at about $20,000, Smith said.

Council will likely vote on the election budget and set a date for the vote at its meeting next week.

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