A local business owner and project manager of rail operations for the City of Ottawa has put his name forward to be the next city councillor in Barrhaven West. 

Jay Chadha has officially registered for the position which will be left vacant after longtime councillor Jan Harder announced she won’t be seeking re-election after two and a half decades. 

Chadha has worked for OC Transpo for the last 19 years, and has called the community home for 25 years. He has concerns over the large sum of spending coming from city hall, and feels existing funds could be better spent. 

“It’s a dysfunctional city council right now. Our debt is rising — we are three billion dollars in debt,” Chadha told the Barrhaven Independent. “A city with a million people, that’s roughly about three thousand dollars per resident. We are spending money where we don’t need to and we aren’t putting money where it should be focused.”

An example Chadha gives is with the new central library being built downtown. The project is already facing construction delays and is hundreds of thousands over budget. 

“Let me be clear: I am all for libraries; I think they are great resources for people of all ages to go and connect,” he said. “However the new central library downtown right now is $330 million over budget. We have not got our money’s worth from Lansdowne’s recent developments, and now we are talking about Lansdowne 2.0 without any public consultations. Not only that, it comes with a price tag of $150 million. We cannot look at taxpayers like a blank cheque where we keep drawing from an account.”