CityNews and RogersTV are declaring Mark Sutcliffe has been reelected for a second term as the city’s mayor after a sizable victory.
The reports have come in with 45 per cent of the vote, with more than 269 polls reporting.
The former broadcast journalist was first elected into office in 2022 with just over half the vote, and he renewed his mandate on Oct. 26. He ran on a platform of investing in public transportation, affordable housing, lower taxes and rehabilitating the downtown core.
Here are some of the promises:
Tax limit of 2.0 to 2.25 per cent for the first two years
Montly transit pass lowered to $95
Recreation fees are frozen for seniors and families
Finalize the upload of the Ottawa LRT to the province
Phase 3 started for the LRT
Hire 350 more police, firefighters and paramedics
Expand community policing
Special constables in hospitals
End youth homelessness by 2030
Build 650 new supportive housing units in five years
Healthcare for people experiencing homelessness
Addressing flooding in flood-prone communities
What community leaders are looking for
RogersTV hosted a panel of community leaders to discuss some of the issues the next term of council must face.
Sueling Ching, CEO of the Ottawa Board of Trade, said a focus on growing the city’s economy can help offset lower tax increases to residents, but there is a specific person, she said, who is best suited to do that.
“(We need) strong leadership with a clear vision; a mayor and council willing to collaborate with all levels of government and private stakeholders,” she said.
Michelle Hurtubise, CEO of Centretown Community Health, said a major point is how the city builds its budget. She believes that municipalities that create a “vision” of what residents want first then figuring out the cost, before setting the tax threshold.
“We need the vision and strategy, then build the budget and then determine what it’s going to cost us to get the life that we want,” she said.
Experts also mentioned the need to rehabilitate the city’s downtown, which has suffered with little foot traffic during the pandemic and has not rebounded. With the federal public servants mandated to go back into the office, David Jeanes, Transport Action Group and Heritage Ottawa, said more transit is desperately needed.
“You are going to have a great capacity demand on the transit system, which can’t be met with what we have now,” he said. ” It’s going to be very important to develop suburban employment centres so that the growth and population doesn’t result in a massive downtown and commuter flows.”
Hurtubise also noted that transportation doesn’t mean just to downtown Ottawa, people are struggling to commute within their communities also. She’s hoping to see faster busses within neighbourhoods.
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