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DARREN PITTMAN / Staff Land owners and developers confront Mayor Peter Kelly outside council chambers at Halifax City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. Not able to see or hear the proceedings of a public hearing into the development moratorium, a crowd stormed into the already-filled chambers, causing the mayor to postpone the hearing until the overflow crowds could be accommodated.

By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER / City Hall Reporter

About 100 people stormed the council chambers at Halifax city hall Tuesday afternoon, furious that they had been turned away from an overcrowded public hearing on urban sprawl.

"The mood was absolute bedlam," said Kevin Clarke, who was in the front of the charge as the crowd pushed right through the ornate, oversized double doors and into the meeting, stunning participants.

The group had been relegated to an overflow room downstairs because of fire code restrictions that limit the number of people in the council chambers to 117. More than 200 showed up.

But the boisterous overflow group - made up mostly of landowners and related industry workers - grew outraged because they didn't have access to an audio or video feed from the public hearing.

"People were just exasperated . . . we couldn't even hear what the council was saying," Mr. Clarke said.

Within about 15 minutes, he said, the crowd hastily filed out. A municipal clerk at the foot of the stairs was no match for the throng as it made its way up to the meeting room, he said.

"This is a public meeting and you come over here and you can't even see anything going on," said Robert Conrod, the leader of the pack.

His bellows and yells could be heard outside the room before the group banged its way in.

Mayor Peter Kelly hastily adjourned the meeting at 3:25 p.m. after Coun. Bruce Hetherington suggested police should be called in to handle the situation.

Police officers arrived within minutes but weren't needed.

At 3:40 p.m., the mayor adjourned the meeting until 6 p.m., when EastLink cable TV airs its usual council-night program and a TV feed is available within the building.

"We do admit we weren't fully prepared," the mayor said to the grumbling crowd.

While many in attendance agreed to return at the later time, others turned away in disgust.

"It's dictatorship," Stanley MacHattie of East Lawrencetown said to the mayor.

"It's just going to be put down our throats," he said of council's January decision to rein in urban development.

Another man, who berated the mayor in front of TV cameras, made it clear that people in Halifax County still resent their forced amalgamation with Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford back in 1996.

"This is a farce," said the man, who refused to give his name to media workers.

In the evening, city hall staff - and four uniformed police officers - were on hand to direct the overflow crowd to three separate rooms equipped with several TVs.

The hearing, held before council is to decide on amendments to its temporary growth-management plan while the municipality works on its 25-year regional strategy, lasted four hours.

More time has been set aside today to hear from about 40 people who didn't get their chance to speak.

City staffers have said planning is needed because of the debilitating cost to the municipality of providing services in areas not already on city sewer and water hookups.

To that end, some of the amendments council is considering include not permitting new roads to be built in unserviced areas and limiting development to 25 lots per year in subdivisions for which plans were received before Jan. 22, the day the province approved the 90-day moratorium.

Of the 51 people who spoke during the afternoon and evening sessions, 15 were in favour of the moratorium and future development controls.

They say widespread development affects health, air quality, traffic congestion and safety and strains infrastructure and water quality and quantity.

Some speakers represented organizations like the Ecology Action Centre and the Sierra Club of Canada, while others included an earnest environmental scientist and a schoolteacher affected by the late 1990s overdevelopment of Hammonds Plains.

"The infrastructure has still not caught up," Joyce Evans said, noting her school needs seven portable classrooms to deal with skyrocketing enrolment.

Speakers were uniformly polite and deferential to council. There was no indication that anything had transpired earlier in the day.

Many speakers were from the Eastern Shore and were angry that the scheduled public information sessions did not include a stop in their district.

Some spoke of their personal situations and how as small landowners they feel stripped of the right to earn a living or provide for their children in the future.

"I have dreamed of developing our land, however, this moratorium will put my dreams aside," Valerie Logan of Blind Bay told council.

Margaret Waters Kaizer of Porters Lake echoed those sentiments, saying the dreams of young electricians and construction workers in her community will be crushed when their jobs are lost.

"You're taking away the ambitions of our young men," she said.

Several said they felt the city was calling them a tax burden and they resented it.

A fisherman told council that he'll be forced to move if he can't use his land to support himself.

"I got no insurance, no RRSPs, and if something happens to me down the road . . . my land ain't worth nothin'," he said.