Battle for Ste. Anne

Ste. Anne de Bellevue Mayor Bill Tierney is looking to make a comeback in November, but he will be facing stiff competition from newcomer Francis Deroo, a financial manager at Maple Leaf Foods who has been closely involved with the city for several years.

"This city has become very impersonal," Deroo said, decrying a lack of citizen participation in how Ste. Anne is run. "We have to put citizens back in the heart of Ste. Anne de Bellevue."

Deroo, who sits on the village's public security committee, said there is a lack of communication and transparency in the town.

"The city's committees don't work," he said, stating there is not enough citizen participation.

Last year, he said, when the city announced the formation of a financial committee, he offered himself as a volunteer member, but was shut out in favour of elected officials and city clerks.

Born and raised in the small village at the western tip of the island, Deroo also finds it worrisome Ste. Anne de Bellevue's current administration let many newly arrived residents purchase homes in the northern section of town without telling them there would be industrial development right underneath their noses with the arrival of Schluter, a German tile manufacturer setting up shop on Ste. Marie Street.

However, Tierney was having none of it. He said many of those new residents who have complained about construction were under the impression they were moving in to a completely rural area. "Well, they were not," he said. "That is not an oversight on the part of council."

Tierney also said the city's various committees have over 40 citizens involved in them in one way or another, adding the finance committee is simply not one that Ste. Anne saw fit to open up resident involvement too.

"It's his right to challenge the incumbent mayor," said Tierney, acknowledging he and Deroo once worked well together when trying to get Ste. Anne to demerge from the Montreal megacity it forcibly joined in 2001.

However, he said Deroo is, in essence, standing in as candidate for Senneville resident Gaétan Provost, since the latter cannot run in Ste. Anne himself.

"He's Mr. Provost's candidate," Tierney said.

Provost, who helps run a flower shop in Ste. Anne de Bellevue with his father, has been running a politically charged blog about the village since last summer, and has not been shy about calling for change in city council. He even posted notices to ask interested residents to step forward as candidates in upcoming elections.

Nevertheless, he completely denied that Deroo was "his" candidate for mayor by proxy.

"I'm not surprised at all by Mr. Tierney's accusations," Provost said. Deroo registered his name as a candidate for Ste. Anne's mayoralty on his own, he added, and not in response to the notices posted on his blog.

"I have known Mr. Deroo for a very long time," he added. In fact, the two have been firefighters in Ste. Anne together.

Provost also said he supports Deroo as a mayor, but that hardly means there is some sort of agenda between the two.

Deroo is backed by at least two other new faces in Ste. Anne politics who have thrown their hats into the ring against incumbent councillors Sébastien Frayes de Veubeke in District 1 and Lucie Larose in District 6. "I support his candidacy," said District 6 challenger Paola Hawa, a lawyer. Hawa, who has been vigilantly attending council meetings over the last few months, would like to see a more environmentally friendly vision for Ste. Anne. "I believe that the next four years will represent tremendous challenges for Ste. Anne," she said.

She added that most Ste. Anne residents seem unaware that the city of Montreal has suggested the village co-operate with them to establish a new provincial park in L'Anse à L'Orme. She slammed the current administration's preference for development in the area. "Take a look at the (potential) increase in your property value," she said, suggesting that the advantage of a provincial park in the area would be a windfall for homeowners.

Deroo's other public backer is Jay Van Wagner, running in District 1 against incumbent de Veubeke. Van Wagner also decried the lack of transparency in administrative decisions. The furniture store operator said vandalism remains a lingering problem in his sector, which includes John Abbott College and the waterfront on Ste. Anne Street.

"You've got five per cent of the student population who definitely don’t like to follow any rules," he said.

Van Wagner is also not convinced the parking meters installed on Ste. Anne Street two years ago have proven their worth yet, either. "I can't believe it's doing more good than harm," he said.

Tierney, who has been mayor for 15 years, thinks it would be bad timing for Ste. Anne residents to seek out someone with less experience in municipal politics. "We have good relations with Montreal, good relations with Quebec," Tierney said. "I have a good network. I know a lot of people."

He pointed to the recently started $4 million Ste. Anne Street renovation project as an example of his success, along with the extension of Ste. Anne's bike path on Morgan Road.

Tierney said he and all returning council candidates would be running as independents. "We are running on our collective record," he acknowledged.

Incumbent Lucie Larose was categorical in pointing out she did not support anybody in particular. "I will work with whichever mayor is elected," she said. "They are both intelligent men, they are both capable of doing the job."

Larose said she was not completely opposed to some development in L'Anse à L'Orme. As an advocate of better public transit in the West Island, she said it may even be necessary. "You have to justify your demand for more transit," she said, "and you need a bigger population for that."

In 2005, Bill Tierney returned to Ste. Anne's mayoralty with a 68 per cent vote. Deroo ran for a seat in District 3 as councillor that year, and won 39.