Little more than a month left and I still don't know who to vote for in Kitchissippi. Here we go in alphabetical order.
The website of
Katherine Hobbs, who got things off to a bad start by putting up a picture of the old City Hall, is nearly devoid of any significant detail on what she stands for. There's some talk of it being "
critical that Kitchissippi not be bypassed by planned light rail routes" and that light rail "
will allow visitors to visit our shops, restaurants, parks, beaches and cultural venues without bringing their car" so I assume she's actually in favour of using the West Transitway route to bring light rail further west, which is good for Westboro. It doesn't say whether she supports the tunnel, though I have read it elsewhere that she does. The thing is, it's kind of hard to be both in favour of bringing light rail west sooner AND being in favour of the tunnel since we don't have the cash for both. For someone from a business background, that kind of lack of realism is disappointing.
I also have to question whether she has been paying attention to events in the last five years given this position on development:
Through a series of moderated town hall sessions, we can create comprehensive plans to guide City staff and developers. We will work together so that our neighbourhoods grow the way we envision them. Didn't we already do that? Isn't the problem that the plan thus created isn't actually being respected? I'm not sure how more town hall sessions is going to change anything. Are developers going to suddenly start respecting the results this time?
The page finishes off with the usual platitudes about value-for-money.
Incumbent
Christine Leadman's
personal website consists of a single jpeg image with a few bullet points and not a single link to anything. Not terribly impressive. The
Kitchissippi Ward website is full of stuff about what she has been doing but of course doesn't have anything regarding her election platform. I do know she supports an LRT alignment down Carling but what she supports downtown I have no idea since she has voted against both the DOTT as well as against a motion to add studying a surface option as part of the DOTT study. That motion lost by one vote.
Leadman has been at the forefront of the opposition to the convent proposal, which at least shows she's supporting the content of the Community Development Plan she helped create. I think the CDP was a bit restrictive on this site, but I also think these things should be defended because otherwise they turn into pointless exercises and just lead to more community cynicism. Ashcroft is at fault for overpaying for the property and all they've done is unnecessarily given Leadman an issue to run with.
Last up is
Daniel Stinger. Unlike Ms. Hobbs, he actually has a dedicated "Issues" page, but its content is even thinner than Ms. Hobbs' mainpage when it comes to discussing them. Nevertheless, here we learn that "
core to Mr. Stringers campaign will be the idea of keeping traffic and taxes down in a greener Ottawa". There is some chatter about it being "
especially important is [to] protect our community from the drive through traffic from people who live to the west and work to the east of us" and that "
the Ottawa River, our park lands, the Byron strip, all need to be preserved". I'll take that to mean he's opposed to light rail serving Westboro, since the various routing options west of Westboro have to use one or both of the Byron strip and the Ottawa River corridors. I guess his commitment to a "greener Ottawa" doesn't include a greener Westboro and Ottawa River Parkway corridor by way of removing buses from them, since
no LRT in Westboro = continuation of BRT on the Parkway. Anyone who believes for a moment that routing LRT onto Carling will remove buses from the Parkway and the Scott Street trench is living in a fantasy world. At a minimum all buses from Kanata would continue to use that route at least as far as Tunney's Pasture, and, given that the powers-that-be want to build a combined LRT+BRT facility between Baseline and Lincoln Fields, it could possibly be even more than that.
Apparently, "Daniels [sic] Roots in Kitchissippi" and "Community Service" count as "issues". His "Working Co-operatively" link is where he has placed a few more positions on issues. I do like his position on water quality though: "
reclaim our rivers with more primary storm sewage treatment to improve swimming at Westboro and other beaches". Pinecrest Creek and the other stormwater sewer outlets upstream of Westboro Beach certainly need some kind of primary treatment, probably in the form of constructed wetlands built out into the river. Nowhere can I find a position on the tunnel, nor on the convent issue.
Good grief. These three have had months to get their websites up to snuff and stamp out some positions on something. I might haven given Leadman a bit of slack for a minimalist website given that she's been busy but a website featuring all of a single jpeg and no links to anything just doesn't cut it. It doesn't even have the address of her re-election office for crying out loud and to use the provided email address I would have to type it in (never a good way of organizing things). So, all in all, a pretty uninspiring set of choices. I kind of wish I was in Capital Ward, where it would be a pretty easy choice for David Chernushenko.
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