There can only be one mayor and Ottawa\u0027s choices have narrowed to two very clear alternatives in one of the most consequential municipal votes in recent history.
That’s the message both Catherine McKenney and Mark Sutcliffe are taking to voters in the sprint to the finish of this mayoral race, electric with the kind of excitement and uncertainty the city’s gone without since Jim Watson steamrolled into the mayor’s office more than a decade ago.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Eleven others round out the roster of mayoral candidates but none has been able to secure more than a few percentage points of support in public polls, with the exception of Param Singh. In a Mainstreet poll released Friday, 10 per cent said they were leaning towards a vote for Singh, a 20-year veteran of the Ottawa Police Service, while Chiarelli slipped to fourth place with four per cent.
If Friday’s Mainstreet poll does reflect how people end up marking their ballots, Singh could also be a sleeper factor that influences the mayoral outcome on election night.longest list of support And that’s service cuts, McKenney reiterated in a Wednesday interview — a now-favourite line of attack, with Sutcliffe responding with a commitment that he will not cut any services or programs and McKenney insisting that he’ll have to, to stick to the financial plan with tax increases in the two-per-cent range that he’s laid out.
Sutcliffe, meanwhile, has been characterizing McKenney’s plans as downtown-focused and out-of-touch with the current desires and concerns of most Ottawans. McKenney has fired back against that by referencing their own time living in and working for the suburbs as a staffer at city hall, and highlighting platform promises they say will benefit all of Ottawa’s residents, including borrowing $250 million to fast-track the construction of the city’s cycling network.
Those residents have certainly been given plenty of material to chew over in deciding how they want to mark their mayoral ballots. Sutcliffe and McKenney each rolled out platform pledges by theme over a period of weeks and both published financial plans, costing out their promises and property tax commitments.Article content