The issues the mayor\u002Delect faces are myriad and complex. Hopefully, he brings as skilled a team to city hall as he did to his campaign
Throughout the campaign, Mark Sutcliffe countered Catherine McKenney’s promises to make Ottawa a “world-class” city with a more measured hand promising safety and fiscal responsibility. That clearly resounded with voters: as Monday’s results came in, Sutcliffe held steady with just over 50 per cent of votes cast, about 14 points ahead of McKenney, to become Ottawa’s 60th mayor.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Ottawa SUN, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
The issues Sutcliffe now faces are enormous and complex: an affordable housing crisis; Phases 2 and 3 of LRT, plus other transit woes; Lansdowne 2.0; the development of LeBreton Flats; crumbling roads and other infrastructure issues; a downtown core emptied of workers, a result of a pandemic that has also exacerbated the need for more and better social services, and hasn’t yet ended.
Watson’s repeated roundup of the usual suspects to get the votes he needed to steer the city in the direction he wanted, however, more often than not worked for him. But as a first-time mayor without previous council experience, Sutcliffe will find himself surrounded in three weeks by the least-experienced council in memory. Everyone would do well not to alienate the others as they muddle their way through protocols, rules of governance and points of order, nevermind learning where the washrooms are.many of the old scores have been settled one way or the other, also gone is a large chunk of council’s institutional knowledge.