Ste. Anne residents oust incumbent mayor, council

Ste. Anne de Bellevue voters resolutely voted for change last night, ousting 15-year-mayor Bill Tierney in favour of former firefighter Francis Deroo, and bringing in a nearly entirely new council as well.

"I'm going to plant my two feet in the city's dossiers," said Deroo, who earned 58 per cent of voters' intentions yesterday night versus incumbent Tierney's 42.

Deroo, a financial advisor for Maple Leaf Foods Inc., ran a campaign on more transparency at city hall, as well as an end to a couple of projects started up by the previous administration that he deemed unpopular.

"My goal is to get rid of the city's parking metres," he said as an example, referring to the system started off by Tierney in 2007 on the commercial sector of busy Ste. Anne Street. "I do want to review the city's parking norms though," Deroo said.

The metres were unpopular with many of the city's merchants when first installed, with fears they would drive away customer traffic.

"He was never able to prove they were profitable," Deroo said of Tierney's claims they brought in a lot of money to the city's coffers.

Another major project Deroo wants to halt is the previous administration's bid to develop 19 out of 74 hectares of the l'Anse à l'Orme park on Ste. Anne territory. "We're going to put a lot effort into this," Deroo said. "We're going to try to save the green space," he added.

The development project was the subject of a meet-the-candidates night over a week ago, during which Tierney was the only incumbent to appear in defence of it, stating the lack thereof would cost Ste. Anne dearly in annual tax revenue.

Most of the councillors who were elected yesterday have come out in favour of protecting the woods as well. "That is my number one issue," said Ryan Young, District 2's new councillor, but a familiar face in both local environmental and political circles. This was the John Abbott teacher's third attempt at getting elected to Ste. Anne's council, and he has also run as a Green Party candidate in both federal and provincial elections in the past, including both campaigns last year. In fact, public records on Election Quebec and Elections Canada's websites show Tierney donated to both his campaigns last year. "He is my friend," Young said, adding Tierney even appeared happy to learn that Young got elected yesterday.

Young's other priority, he said, was the installation of a dog park somewhere in his districts. "A lot of people want a dog park," he said he noticed during his door-to-door campaign.

Another new face to Ste. Anne's council is District 6's Paola Hawa, a lawyer and management consultant who ousted incumbent Lucie Larose and fended off another challenger, Tom Broad. "It was a long, hard, tough slug," Hawa said of her campaign, adding she made sure to spend a lot of time with each citizen she met during her door-to-door canvassing.

For Hawa, getting L'Anse à L'Orme connected to the rest of already protected park land in other nearby West Island municipalities is a major concern as well.

"My long-term goal, realizing that this is not something that's going to happen overnight, is to restart negotiations with the city of Montreal for a regional park," she said.

Her short-term goal, she added, is to create some better transit availability for teens living in Ste. Anne de Bellevue.

The only councillor who will return to his seat in Ste. Anne is District 5 incumbent Michel Bouassaly, who gathered 82 per cent of the vote in his area.

Tierney, who was first elected as a councillor in 1982 and at the helm of Ste. Anne since 1994, has not granted any interviews since his loss. However, he did issue a statement to media saying he was bowing out of municipal politics "proud of the achievements of the six councils" he has served on.

The proudest of those, he wrote, was his leading Ste. Anne through Montreal's demerger process in 2005. Tierney said Ste. Anne's vigorous democracy—as demonstrated by a high voter turn-out in advance polls last week—would not have been possible under Montreal. "Our population and our issues would have been marginalized, non-existent even," he said.

He added Deroo's campaign promises would have "to be reviewed under the cold light of administrative and financial reality."