Leiper claims victory for second term

Jeff Leiper has leaped over his competition once again.

Leiper returns for a second term as councillor in Kitchissippi, handily beating his only rival, Daniel Stringer.

“I am extremely proud of the strong mandate shown to me by the people of the Kitchissippi ward throughout my campaign,” Leiper said after his victory.

“I will continue to work on making Kitchissippi more inclusive, safer and more thoughtfully planned going forward.”

It was a two-horse race, and the result was never really in doubt as Leiper won with 85 per cent of the vote.

Stringer, a former aide to one-time Ottawa Centre Liberal MP Richard Patten, has run for council four times in the ward, losing twice and dropping out once at the last minute. He also managed just 15 per cent of the vote in 2010, finishing last in a three-way race.

Leiper, 48, proved a popular councillor in his first term, a high-profile politician and a frequent face at community events. Intensification — “thoughtless intensification,” in Leiper’s words — was one of the key issues in Kitchissippi. In his campaign, Leiper railed against out-of-scale homes being built on infill lots and the loss of trees to developers’ shovels.

Traffic remains a problem, too, and was the No. 1 source of complaints to Leiper’s office in his first term, he said. He wants more traffic calming to slow cut-through commuters who use side streets to bypass congestion on the main arteries.

Stringer, 72, also wanted to ease the pressure in the ward due to intensification and urged the city to spread that pressure along the LRT lines, noting that little had been down to slow intensification in the four years Leiper was on council.