Politics is a tricky business - it's a job where compromise is key, but perhaps not popular or easy. It's a job where personal animosities and harsh words need to be frequently put aside to serve the public good. It's a job where egos frequently need to be checked at the door, and ambitions need to be tempered by what's best for your electorate. And it's our job to ask uncomfortable questions of our political representatives. With that in mind, I have to ask: are we, CBRM taxpayers, subsidizing our Mayor's future political ambitions to our own detriment? Mayor Clarke, for decades now, has been chasing some form or another of a port development project in the CBRM. We now have approximately 20 million dollars wrapped up in this project - where is the benefit? Where are the jobs? Where is the construction? And most importantly - why does Mayor Clarke hold many of these discussions in private Council sessions blocked to the general public? We live in an area where 1/3rd of our children live in poverty. Is Mayor Clarke really making the best use of such a huge sum of money? I'd say obviously not... and what is truly concerning is that the most logical reason I can come up with for such a massive capital expense, surrounded by such secrecy, at such a dire time in our Island's history is... well, it's Mayor Clarke's ambition to become leader of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative party. The failure of Mayor Clarke's repeated efforts at port development would not look good in a provincial leadership campaign, and I fear (and hope I'm wrong about) the implication that we're spending our precious resources simply padding the man's resume. Then there's the utter fiasco regarding the Centre for Arts, Culture and Innovation. This is a wonderful project, in downtown Sydney, which is designed to serve as a community cultural and economic hub (I'm sure many readers have seen similar successful projects in Halifax), handling everything from art to economic development to nutritional training for low-income people. The federal government has already funded the project to the tune of 5 million dollars. The provincial government is onboard as well - they're ready to provide 3.2 million dollars worth of funding. New Dawn Enterprises have pitched in 1 million dollars themselves! But when taking the project to our municipal government to obtain an additional 1.5 million in funding, the Mayor has called into question (without providing much in the way of reasoning) the economic viability of the idea. You read that correctly - we're turning down more than 9 million dollars of fully funded economic development because... it'll cost us 1.5 million? In what world does this make sense?! I fear, once again, that the most logical explanation for this baffling delay is Mayor Clarke's desire to avoid giving accolades to a political rival - in this case that would be Rankin MacSween, President of New Dawn Enterprises and former mayoral opponent of Mayor Clarke. Again - I really hope I'm wrong here, and I'd really like to hear Mayor Clarke address these concerns. But he won't. And that should concern us all. UPDATE: It appears these concerns were not unfounded: https://capebreton.lokol.me/cape-breton-mayor-drops-by-south-shore-to-explore-pc-leadership