INFRASTRUCTURE, CRIME, INTENSIFICATION TOP ISSUES
In the leadup to Ottawa’s municipal election, we surveyed every candidate, providing each with a list of questions. It’s an exercise that’s meant to help residents get to know the candidates better and get a firm sense of where they stand on important issues facing our city. We’ll run a selection of their answers, featuring different wards each day. Today, we feature Kitchissippi (Ward 15) and Rideau-Rockcliffe (Ward 13). Candidates appear in alphabetical order. For the full survey responses, please go to our website, ottawacitizen.com. WARD 15: KITCHISSIPPI
Population (2016): 43,258 Households (2016): 20,497
Votes eligible/cast in 2014: 28,685/13,849 (48.3 per cent) Area: 15.1 sq. km.
Boundaries: The Ottawa River on the north; the O-Train tracks on the east; Hwy. 417 and Carling Avenue on the south; and Maitland Avenue and Sherbourne Road in the west.
Jeff Leiper defeated incumbent Katherine Hobbs in the 2014 municipal election, earning 55 per cent of the vote to Hobbs’s 30 per cent. This year, Leiper has only one challenger — Daniel Stringer — a former aide to onetime Ottawa Centre Liberal MPP Richard Patten. This will be Stringer’s fourth kick at the Kitchissippi can; he ran in 2003, ’06 (dropping out at the last minute) and ’10. In the 2010 campaign, he claimed almost 16 per cent of the vote, good for third (and last) place.
JEFF LEIPER
1 What are the two most important issues in your ward? Why?
Thoughtless intensification is a catch-all category that encompasses a multitude of related issues. While development proceeds without greater check, we are seeing: the replacement of housing with homes out-of-scale to the neighbourhood; the loss of our urban forest canopy with significant environmental and economic implications; the addition of hundreds of cars on our streets per year without the resources to mitigate the effects; the strain on our stormwater infrastructure as permeable space is lost; the strain on our recreation facilities and other social infrastructure without the resources to add to those; the increasing loss of neighbourhood affordability; the lack of necessary social and policing resources to deal with becoming a downtown neighbourhood; and, a lack of resources for winter operations to ensure that we maintain a walkable neighbourhood as intensification continues. Intensification is our city’s official policy, and critical to growing sustainably. But it is proceeding without the necessary attendant resources.
Traffic issues are the single largest source of complaint in the ward. Congestion has led to aggressive cut-through traffic, and the poor design of roads is endangering pedestrians and cyclists. We need to do much more to slow down traffic, and to prioritize the safety of pedestrians and cyclists on our streets.
2 If you are the incumbent, what ward-specific decision made by council in the last term are you most proud?
Council’s handling of the local commercial zoning with respect to its impact in Hintonburg likely escaped the notice of many residents, but is something in which I take great pride. I worked closely with colleagues, staff, businesses residents to put a hold on that decision pending the creation of a community vision for Armstrong, led by the community itself and that I facilitated. That vision has now been created, and is guiding development today.
3 What ward-specific decision do you wish council had dealt with better?
The decision to allow the Domicile development on Roosevelt, reversing the small wins achieved by the community at planning committee, is emblematic of the unwillingness by this council to place reasonable checks on development and developers. I have every reason to expect that, under the new provincial appeal system, that decision will be reversed.
4 Do you live in the ward in which you’re running? If not, what’s your interest in the area?
I live in Kitchissippi.
DANIEL STRINGER
1 What are the two most important issues in your ward? Why?
We need to get back to basics and pave our crumbling streets. I have identified almost 30 neglected streets in Kitchissippi that need resurfacing, which will be good for everybody who uses them. As well, we need a resultsoriented plan, not just a communications strategy, to get council to agree to spread intensification along the full length of the LRT, and not so disproportionately in Kitchissippi.
2 If you are the incumbent, what ward-specific decision made by council in the last term are you most proud?
N/A.
3 What ward-specific decision do you wish council had dealt with better?
As a resident of Kitchissippi the greatest failure of this last term of council has been the incumbent’s failure to get the best possible deal for the community in the Rosemount Library renewal. He could have done a better job of handling the entire file and not just going for a quick-and-easy solution and failing to deliver a really state-of-the art facility for future generations in Hintonburg, the Civic Hospital region and the much wider area that uses that tiny space.
4 Do you live in the ward in which you’re running? If not, what’s your interest in the area?
Yes, I live in Kitchissippi; I was born here and have lived most of my adult life here.
WARD 13: RIDEAUROCKCLIFFE
Population (2016): 38,154 Households (2016): 18,670
Votes eligible/cast in 2014: 10,497/26,339 (39.85 per cent) Area: 19.8 sq. km
Boundaries: Rideau-Rockcliffe is bounded by the Ottawa River to the north, and the Rideau River to the west, not including Vanier. It includes Overbrook and other neighbourhoods east of the Rideau River as far south as Highway 417, cutting north on St. Laurent Boulevard and east on Ogilvie Road. Blair Road forms the eastern boundary.
In 2014, Tobi Nussbaum, a former diplomat and director general of strategic policy at the Canadian International Development Agency, won the ward handily with 47.19 per cent of the vote. He was one of a field of six candidates, including incumbent Peter D. Clark, a former regional chair who was elected councillor for the ward in 2010, but won only 18.22 per cent of the vote in 2014. This time around Nussbaum has only one challenger, Peter Heyck, who says gangrelated crime and infrastructure improvements such as roads, sidewalks and parks are the most important issues in the ward.
PETER HEYCK
1 What are the two most important issues in your ward? Why?
A) Gang-related crime, and the urgent need to tackle the problem.
B) Infrastructure improvements such as roads, sidewalks and parks.
2 If you are the incumbent, what ward-specific decision made by council in the last term are you most proud?
N/A.
3 What ward-specific decision do you wish council had dealt with better?
Please see question above about “important issues in your ward.”
4 Do you live in the ward in which you’re running? If not, what’s your interest in the area?
I originally moved to the ward almost 25 years ago, and have lived and worked in the ward ever since, but recently moved to be closer to my place of work.
TOBI NUSSBAUM
1. What are the two most important issues in your ward? Why?
My top infrastructure priority is modernizing and improving community and recreational spaces in the ward to ensure a high quality of life for residents. It is imperative the neighbourhoods inside the urban core see the benefits of intensification in their communities through demonstrable improvements in public amenities. Changes in policies are required. For example, the so-called cash-in-lieu of parkland policy, which requires developers to provide monies for recreational upgrades, should take into account increases in population and should require that 100 per cent of those monies be spent in the neighbourhoods where the development occurs. The current policy of using 40 per cent of those funds to be spent elsewhere has no policy rationale.
Another priority is addressing the high levels of poverty in the ward by encouraging the construction of more affordable housing and ensuring social service needs are met. The opening of the Rideau Hub at the former high school and the creation of a ward youth strategy both offer a promising opportunity to coordinate efforts in this area.
2. If you are the incumbent, what ward-specific decision made by council in the last term are you most proud?
Ensuring appropriate development is a major priority for residents, so the council decision to extend the mature neighbourhood overlay to additional parts of Rideau-Rockcliffe, combined with its unanimous approval of heritage conservation district plans in two neighbourhoods, means the ward has a number of important tools to ensure new development is consistent with the existing character of our communities.
3. What ward-specific decision do you wish council had dealt with better?
While there were many city-wide decisions taken by council with which I disagreed, I was pleased that the ward specific issues that came to council had positive outcomes for Rideau-Rockcliffe residents.
4. Do you live in the ward in which you’re running? If not, what’s your interest in the area?
Yes. I first moved to Rideau Rockcliffe over 15 years ago and my wife grew up and went to school in the ward.