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(Posted
3 p.m., Aug. 31)
Councillor's assistant seeks election in Innes Ward
By Fred Sherwin
OrleansOnline.ca
For
the past four years, Innes Ward candidate Tammy Lynch
has been deeply involved in looking after the interests
and concerns of residents living in the ward as an assistant
to incumbent councillor Jody Mitic, who announced in the
spring that he wouldn't be running for a second term for
personal reasons.
 It
is that personal involvement that motivated Lynch to run
for the seat in the hope of continuing on the work started
by Mitic, such as the proposed renovation and expansion
of the Blackburn Arena and the effort to extend Brian
Coburn Boulevard to Renaud Road.
"Nobody
knows the issues and how to get things done better than
I do,� says Lynch, who is running against Donna Leith-Gudbranson,
who was an assistant to former Innes Ward councillor Rainer
Bloess; Laura Dudas, who works in communications at the
City of Ottawa and finished second to Mitic in the last
election; and Fran�ois Tr�panier, who finished third in
the last election.
Innes
Ward includes the communities of Blackburn Hamlet, Bradley
Estates, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill South and Chateauneuf.
Lynch volunteered as a member of Mitic's campaign for
the 2014 municipal election, and joined his staff as Director
of Community Relations after Mitic was elected.
Lynch,
who has lived in Chapel Hill with her husband and children
for 18 years, has volunteered for the Blackburn Minor
Hockey Association, eventually becoming its vice-president
of hockey operations for eight years.
Additionally,
she has volunteered at Good Shepherd Catholic School where
she became a member of the parent council. If elected
to city council, Lynch says she would consult residents
for their input on decisions affecting their community.
Her
chief priority, if elected, would be traffic calming,
which she says has been a common theme during her door-to-door
campaign.
"It's
a safety issue,� says Lynch. "People don't feel safe on
their own street.�
In
particular, Lynch wants to divert traffic currently driving
through Bradley Estates by extending Brian Coburn Blvd.
to Renaud Road. It's a proposal first put forward during
the 2014 campaign, and city staff are currently studying
the option as part of a much larger study aimed at improving
traffic flow in the area.
Other
options included extending Brian Coburn Blvd. to the Blackburn
Bypass which would be widen from four lanes to six lanes,
but Lynch believes the extra lanes will be used for buses,
and even if the weren't, the traffic has gotten to such
a point that the extra lanes wouldn't fully mitigate the
problem.
"Seventy
per cent of the traffic using the bypass are going to
the south end,� argues Lynch. "If you extend Brian Coburn
to Renaud Road, you be diverting all that traffic from
the bypass to where they want to go.�
The
loudest opponent to extending Brian Coburn Blvd. to Renaud
Road is the National Capital Commission, which doesn't
want to see an increase in traffic through the Greenbelt.
Lynch
wants the city to increase its pressure on the NCC to
agree to what everyone else sees as an obvious solution.
Besides
extending Brian Coburn Blvd., Lynch would also like to
see more money spent on improving roads in the ward. If
elected, she plans to collaborate with community associations
and residents to ensure more money is allocated for road
resurfacing in the municipal budget.
Lynch
also wants to ensure that the new LRT system is accessible
to Innes Ward residents, saying on her website that she
will "make sure that Innes Ward is not forgotten�.
The
ward has an extremely high franco-phone population. Although
Lynch is not bilingual, she has promised to ensure that
francophone residents are served in French when dealing
with the councillor's office � a practice employed by
the current councillor.
(This story
was made possible thanks to the generous support of our
local business partners.)
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