Gloucester-Southgate: Houstoun — We need a fresh voice in Gloucester-Southgate

My platform was built by going door-to-door and asking about what mattered to the neighbourhood.

The Citizen invited candidates in the Oct. 24 municipal election to share their thoughts:

Dear reader and neighbour,

I come to you as a fresh candidate with new ideas. I’ve worked in private industry and am not a long-time, entrenched political activist or policymaker. What I bring is a love of our city and, most importantly, our neighbourhood.

I decided to run because I didn’t feel like my voice was being heard. This is not to disparage Coun. Diane Deans, who on many files has done a wonderful job, but I never felt like my voice truly mattered and perhaps you felt the same.

At the start of my campaign, I gave out my contact information and asked you to contact me. My platform was built by going door-to-door and asking about what mattered to the neighbourhood. I believe that street-level issues are what really matter. These are the small things that you experience every day, and your representative should take them seriously. Maybe it’s the local play park, or a dangerous intersection, or perhaps a road that has crumbled. Whatever it is, your representative should be personally helping you with it.

After canvassing the community, I built my platform on five main pillars that I feel address concerns throughout the ward:

1. Repairing and maintaining our roads.

You’ve seen and felt the potholes under your wheels. For as much money as it would take for the city to fix them, people spend that in repairs.

I will get the roads repaved, and also widen them where appropriate so that pedestrians and cyclists have safe and/or separate corridors for travel alongside vehicles.

2. Increasing transit and making it reliable.

There have been route reductions and abysmal service levels in the ward. Meanwhile, delays and a broken LRT continue to cause frustration.

I advocate for providing proper funding to the existing city plan to eliminate delays. Additionally, as in Saskatoon, Ottawa should implement on-demand transit in low-use areas, then use smaller vehicles to deliver more service at a lower cost.

3. Saving our green space.

The Hunt Club Forest parking lot proposal has been a flashpoint. It is a community fixture and a park for local residents. Even if we have to rezone the area to discourage development, we will save it.

4. Building affordable homes.

It’s no secret that prices have skyrocketed. This puts homes out of reach for the young and makes taxes untenable for seniors whose incomes can’t keep up.

I envision mixed-use, mixed-income, old-age friendly neighbourhoods with green space, pathways and shops, where density means tri-plexes, not towers. These will be neighbourhoods for everyone.

5. Stopping gun and gang violence.

Shootings have risen dramatically over the last five years. By rethinking our policing strategy, coupled with more youth and after-school programs, we can divert these kids away from gangs and make our community safer.

Thank you for reading, and please contact me or visit my website if you want to learn more. Above all, vote on Oct. 24.

Sincerely,

Taylor Houstoun

613-981-6479, or:  taylor.h.ottawa@gmail.com

1. 

   Here are the candidates for the 2022 Ottawa municipal election

2. 

   How and where to vote in the 2022 Ottawa municipal election