By Glyn Coffin
Local issues run the risk of being swallowed up and lost in the new city’s sea of voices, says the municipal mouthpiece for Centretown residents.
Members of the Centretown Citizens’ Community Association want the light rail pilot project to succeed and the boarded-up Plant Pool to reopen. But most importantly, the association says, it wants to maintain an individual voice within municipal government.
“The wards (in the new city) are so large that it will be difficult for everybody to get a voice,” said board member Bill Filleter. “We must use our community association to voice Centretown’s concerns to the government.”
The CCCA hosted six mayoral candidates at the First United Church on Oct. 26 to give residents a chance to ask about their future in the new city. About 200 people attended, grilling the candidates on issues like the closed pool and traffic congestion.
The hour-long meeting breezed by, preventing many in attendance from asking their questions. Some grumbled that the meeting was too short as they headed for the exits.
Local resident and community association board member Ida Henderson wants the city to reopen the 76-year-old Plant Pool at the corner of Preston and Somerset streets.
The pool was closed in 1996 after the building was declared unsafe. Community groups have been lobbying the city for almost three years to renovate the facility.
“It has always been an important part of our community and we need to make sure the city is doing something to open it up again,” she said after asking mayoral candidates Claudette Cain and Bob Chiarelli about their plans for the pool.
Both assured Henderson they would work to reopen the Plant Pool. Chiarelli added it will “be a priority for the City of Ottawa.”
Henderson, who raised the issue of traffic congestion in Centretown, also wants government to “get behind the (light rail project) and sell it (to Ottawa residents).”
“We want to keep people in the downtown area,” she says, adding that a completed light rail system will make that possible.
But she’s skeptical about the money that has been spent on studies of the proposed system.
“That $5 million put towards studies could have opened the (Plant) Pool,” she says.
Karen Campbell, a newly elected board member, says local issues like the ones Henderson presented to the candidates stand a higher chance of being neglected in the new city.
“Our issues can easily be submerged within the new city of Ottawa,” she says.
Tony Friend, an environmental consultant and Centretown resident, is also concerned about how Centretown’s concerns will be dealt with by the new city.
“Decisions should be made at the lowest level possible,” he says.
“The local level is where the concern is and they should not just be put in place to give advice to higher levels (of government).”