The population of the ward is projected to rise by 22 per cent to 44,143 people in the next four years, so services for the community are a frequent point of discussion during the campaign.
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From law enforcement to tackle speeding and car thefts, to a new recreation centre that can serve the ward’s families, city council candidates in Riverside South-Findlay Creek see holes in the fabric of their rapidly-growing community and they’re each running with ideas to help fill them.
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There’s also an incumbent-sized void in the race, with one-term councillor and former journalist Carol Anne Meehan not running again.
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Steve Desroches said residents encouraged him to put his name forward to replace Meehan. He had twice represented the suburban south Ottawa ward at the council table when it was known as Gloucester-South Nepean and included Barrhaven.
Desroches left the council table in 2014 to return to a federal public service career, spend more time with his young family and keep a promise to depart after two terms.
“Politics is a calling, not a career. And I’m hearing the call again from the community,” Desroches said in a recent interview.
The population of Riverside South-Findlay Creek, located just south of the Greenbelt and Ottawa International Airport, is projected to rise by 22 per cent to 44,143 people in the next four years, and by 2034, without any boundary changes, go from one of the least-populated wards to one of the city’s largest with the southern O-Train extension running through it.
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Desroches is pitching himself as a candidate who has the “experience and tangible plan” to help build “a balanced and a well-rounded community.”
Businessman and fellow candidate Salah Elsaadi hasn’t shied away from criticizing Desroches, challenging him in a recent debate about his responsibility for problems the ward faces today, like infrastructure and policing that have lagged the community’s growth. Desroches says there’s still lot of work to do, but he’s proud of and prepared to defend his record.
A former chair of the Sparks Street BIA and owner of several businesses — a roofing company, spa and creperie — Elsaadi cites communication and transparency as priorities
During the campaign, for instance, Elsaadi said he met with local MPP Goldie Ghamari to discuss what’s happening with new schools in the area. It’s a provincial issue, he noted, but one he was hearing questions about at voters’ doors. “They don’t know what’s happening. They’re not getting a clear message,” he said, pointing to the arrangement of a public meeting and direct communications to residents on the issue as changes he would make.
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Zainab Alsalihiy is also a fresh face in the race, saying she’s running with a desire to give back to the community and the country to which she immigrated 33 years ago.
She does, however, have some baggage to contend with in her bid for the council job. Two photos were recently shared with this newspaper showing Alsalihiy at the “Freedom Convoy” protest that took over downtown Ottawa last winter.
Alsalihiy, a federal public servant, told this newspaper she attended on two occasions — Jan. 29 and Feb. 5 — with her children, ages 12 and 16. They were all curious, she said, and wanted to get a better understanding of what was happening.
“I’m vaccinated. Like, I have nothing against the vaccine. I have nothing against any of that. But to go on the ground and … with that energy that was there, it kind of was hard not to, you know, talk to the people and understand where they were coming from. And, yeah, I gave them a high five. And to the music, we were grooving, absolutely,” Alsalihiy said, addressing one photo in which she’s grasping the hand of someone through the open window of a pick-up truck, to which an American flag is attached.
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“But did I donate? Did I, you know, hold a flag of some sort that was questionable? Did I go against anybody or anybody went against me? No. It was just pure curiosity.”
While she acknowledged the protest paralyzed the downtown core and could have been done “in a very different manner”, she said she didn’t regret going.
“If there is a protest, if there is any kind of movement happening, we need to understand the whys. We need to understand what is going on. And, through reading and being on the ground, we can get the perspectives.”
Alsalihiy is not the only candidate in this race facing questions about past behaviour.
Alsalihiy and Elsaadi both registered as candidates on the last possible day, and Alsalihiy said she was asked by Elsaadi shortly afterwards to withdraw to avoid splitting the vote. A friend of Alsalihiy’s, who spoke to this newspaper and was present when the two candidates met at a coffee shop, described Elsaadi proposing that Alsalihiy should step down.
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Elsaadi said they didn’t discuss withdrawing at the meeting and he never asked Alsalihiy to do so, calling her claim “false information.”
Alsalihiy shared the alleged incident with this newspaper weeks ago, in an interview for an earlier story. At the time she asked that it not be made public, but she later changed her mind, having learned from other candidates running about the hardships they’d faced in their bids to get elected.
“I think that people do need to know that these things are happening in the election world.”
The fourth candidate running for the council seat — and the first to file nomination papers, back in May — is Em McLellan. An avid follower of city hall affairs and policing in particular, McLellan said she wanted to run to push back against pressures from “special interest groups” to defund the police and felt the ward and its taxpayers were not getting the services they ought to be, such as timely sidewalk snowplowing.
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“I felt … the average person was not being represented at City Hall,” said McLellan, who is refusing any donations this campaign. She explained that, as a councillor, she wanted to represent her ward and not be beholden to anyone else’s priorities.
A major challenge for Riverside South-Findlay Creek’s new representative will be delivering to a growing population the infrastructure people want to see in their communities, especially as homes continue to be added.
Among Desroches’ ideas is a proposal to making Bank Street in south Ottawa “a gateway” to the national capital, including beefing up the Leitrim sports fields and leveraging municipal sites, such as an old salt dome and the former Gloucester city hall, with options like a land swap or partnering on development.
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Elsaadi has said he would deliver a new recreation complex for the ward by the end of his term. Plans for one were announced in 2017, but it hasn’t materialized.
“Stop building things until we can fix up the infrastructure that we have,” McLellan said. She thinks the city needs to demand more from contractors who build said infrastructure at the outset, when it comes to their being responsible for degradation and potholes.
Alsalihiy said the biggest infrastructure pain she was hearing about during the campaign was the widening of Bank Street — construction will start next year — and if elected she’d undertake additional consultation on community needs by holding town hall meetings.
Policing is another pain point in the ward, with candidates hearing a desire for increased presence and engagement to address issues like speeding and vehicle thefts.
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On the latter problem, Desroches’s question to police is “what’s the plan to deal with this?” He has said he’d bring back a practice from his previous council terms of taking the police chief on an annual ward tour to meet with locals and understand their concerns.
Elsaadi wants to see police moved away from mental health calls and construction sites and into more community involvement. He has said he would work with colleagues to get the planned south-end police campus back on council’s agenda after a tender for the $100-million project was cancelled last year amidst escalating construction costs.
Alsalihiy is thinking about how the community can help address some of the challenges that others believe require more police in the ward. “I don’t think that a police officer should be just sitting in one community 24/7 and having them not utilize their time effectively,” she said. But she has been encouraging people to file police reports when they see anything of concern, “because, once we have X amount of reports, they will get on it.”
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Like much of her campaign, McLellan’s idea to address road safety in school zones bucks the conventional. A mother and former crossing guard, she wants crosswalks painted rainbow colours with speedbumps that glow in the dark. It’s about sending a message, she said, that “this is a school zone, this is somebody’s kid, and, collectively, we’re going to make sure that you don’t kill somebody’s kid.”
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In Riverside South-Findlay Creek, council candidates competing to serve fast-growing suburban community - Ottawa Citizen
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