It’s been nearly 10 years since Peter Kelly first sat down behind the mayor’s desk in HRM. Three municipal elections, two devastating storms, billions of dollars in infrastructure investment and one gigantic sewage debacle later, the man many have described as an incurable workaholic is still strolling into city hall each day and pouring himself a steaming cup of green tea.

As the 2000s draw to a close, Metro sat down with the mayor to ask him about HRM’s progress, dream concerts on the Common and why our 23 municipal councillors just can’t seem to get along.

Answers have been edited for length.

Q. You were first elected in 2000, so you’ve spent almost the entire decade as mayor of HRM. What progress do you feel the municipality has made over the past 10 years?

A. Infrastructure. We have four new libraries, six new recreational complexes, five fire halls, new transit routes, three harbour solutions plants, investment in the Alderney Landing complex in Dartmouth ... the list goes on. We’ve certainly come leaps and bounds from where we were.


Q. You started this year off with a rather huge catastrophe at the Halifax sewage-treatment facility. There have been complaints that city hall has not been transparent enough about the flood and ensuing cleanup. How do you respond to that?

A. We can’t control how things are. For us, it was an event that was a big setback from where we had arrived with the harbour being clean. We admitted that the communication was not as strong as it could have been, or should have been. For that we apologized, and now we’ve moved on. We now have the Dartmouth plant being commissioned for effluent, the Herring Cove plant is now treating wastewater and the Halifax plant (will be) fully operational by the spring of next year.


Q. We had some big names in music take to the stage in Halifax in 2009. If you could organize your dream concert on the Commons, which acts would you include?

A. It would have to be U2, in terms of a headliner. I ...[next page]