On October 29th Mayor Mike Savage was our guest speaker and addressed The Rotary Clubs of Dartmouth and Dartmouth East. Mayor Savage has been a long-term supporter of Rotary and a friend to our club.
The Mayor pointed out that Halifax has experienced significant growth in recent years. Particularly interesting is that we are now retaining more talented young people (ages 25-39) from diverse backgrounds than we have in decades.
The majority of his discussion centered on the problem of poverty in Halifax. The Mayor explained that unfortunately there are still more that 55,000 people in the city who live below the poverty line. One in four people in Halifax spend more than 30% of their income on housing and 12% spend 50% or more.
He touched on two of the many initiatives the city in undertaking to address this problem.
The city now offers free transit passes to low income individuals. These passes offer people in need more mobility with an affordable means to travel to and from work, get groceries and access recreation and other aspects of our city.
The second initiative Mayor Mike addressed was the Halifax Mobile Food Markets. These “grocery stores on wheels” bring fresh, high quality, and affordable food to Halifax neighbourhoods that need it most.
For more information on this initiative see the video below.
The Mayor thanked Rotary for all the work we do in making our community a better place and mentioned a few of our projects (e.g. Demetrious Lane, The Hospice etc.) that were of particular interest to him.
Thank you, Mayor Savage, for your inspirational and informative talk.