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Safety and transit issues got a lot of airtime at a Knoxdale-Merivale city councillor candidate debate Thursday evening.
Roughly 200 Knoxdale-Merivale residents crowded into the Nepean Sportsplex to question and hear from the three candidates vying for the suburban ward west of the core.
Former playwright, theatre director and community association president Sean Devine is trying for a second term representing the area’s roughly 40,000 residents.
Devine faces Cole Fraser Jones, who was an electronic-optronic technician in the military and now manages infrastructure modernization projects for a federal department, and Anna Ielo-Tal, a federal public servant.
Devine and Ielo-Tal clashed following last month’s debate after claims of bullying.
Recently, some of Devine’s council colleagues have taken the unusual step of openly campaigning against him and for Ielo-Tal.
Safety and police spending
When asked what steps they would take to improve neighbourhood safety, Devine mentioned his past stances on the Ottawa police budget.
While he supported the last police budget, he voted against three others.
“They always say ‘Well give me more money and I’ll fix it.’ And I got really tired of that response.”
“Sometimes community safety is nothing more than getting a new street light.”
Residents gathered at Nepean Sportsplex on Thursday to watch a debate between Ward 9 candidates. (Emma Weller/CBC)
Ielo-tal pushed back.
“I would never not support the police budget. I’m not sure why Sean did, but that’s something I would always support,” she said.
Fraser Jones expressed doubts around Devine’s street light comment and said he wouldn’t support a police budget increase.
“Just putting street lights up, it might help, but in a lot of cases some of these folks are pretty brazen and it just makes the criminal activity a lot better lit for them.”
Transit changes
On the topic of transit, candidates agreed that change is needed both in the ward and across the city.
“Transit is a mess,” said Ielo-Tal. “What I would do is I would really advocate to bring back express buses.”
She said that transit was once reliable and faster in the ward and it is essential to return to that.
“When the bus says it’s going to come, it actually has to come,” she said.
Devine agreed, stating that “reliability is far more important than the bus affordability.”
“So Anna made reference to bringing back the express busses that you used to ride … We lost [route] 282 with New Ways to Bus, or as I call it ‘New Ways to Lose Riders.’ I worked very very hard with OC Transpo, we got that express bus back,” he said.
Fraser Jones cited light rail problems and said there needs to be political accountability.
“Unfortunately the tracks [have to] get torn up,” he said.
“What I’m hoping, for whoever inevitably wins the mayor’s seat this time around, that they’ll use the strong mayor powers to turn council into a cabinet model and appoint a councillor as secretary of transit.”
Voters can have their say Friday during advanced voting or on election day Oct. 26. Besides city council, they’ll be asked to choose a mayor and school board trustee.
Brandon Ly withdrew from the Knoxdale-Merivale council race around the end of August for family reasons, but it happened too late to take his name off the ballot.