🗳️ NOTL voted for change. Here's the to-do list.

~ NOTL News Crew

Polls closed at 8pm Monday. A few dozen people waited it out in the Community Centre, refreshing the Town's results page through six updates, and the final numbers landed at 9:15. Last week we told you it would all be over by about 8:30. We were 45 minutes optimistic.

Earlier that same day, while people were voting, volunteers were quietly hanging 10,000 knitted poppies across the front of the Old Court House. One town, two very different kinds of civic duty, on the same Monday. Here's what the first one decided.

Every village swears it does Halloween best. Old Town has the history and the ghosts. Virgil has the busy streets full of kids. St. Davids and Queenston have the firehall parties. Glendale and Garrison Village are the new kids on the block. Settle it.

Show us your setup. Hit reply with a photo of your house, your porch or your kid's costume this weekend. We'll share our favourites next week, along with which village won.

THE RESULT: Lord Mayor

🏆 Vaughn Goettler 5,101 votes (55%)
Erwin Wiens 2,870 (31%)
Andrea Kaiser 1,287 (14%)

Turnout: 52.4%, 9,262 ballots. Unofficial results via Niagara Now.

It wasn't close. Goettler, who finished third in this same race in 2022, won a majority in a three-way race and was leading in nine of 11 polls by 9:13pm. He called it "a mandate to bring the change that the town is requesting."

The council race said the same thing a little more quietly. The two incumbents who voted for the Parliament Oak hotel in 2024, Maria Mavridis and Adriana Cater-Vizzari, both lost their seats. The two newcomers who won, Weston Miller and Steve McGuinness, were the ones who spent the Chamber forum on exactly that: Miller with his count of 72 zoning amendments in four years, McGuinness asking voters if those incumbents would "betray your trust again." Gary Burroughs topped the council vote with 5,394 and becomes Deputy Lord Mayor.

Your new council: Lord Mayor Vaughn Goettler, Deputy Lord Mayor Gary Burroughs, Sandra O'Connor, Weston Miller, Andrew Niven, Steve McGuinness and Tim Balasiuk.

A mandate is only useful if someone writes down what it was for. So here's what Goettler told voters during the campaign, in his own words where we have them, and what to watch.

None of this is a criticism. It's the list he ran on, and 5,101 people signed off on it. Lord Mayors have one vote on a council of seven, so most of it needs four votes to happen. We'll come back to this list, in this spot, when each date arrives.

9,262 of NOTL's 17,684 registered voters cast a ballot, up roughly five points from 2022. As of Wednesday that was the best turnout in the region. Online voting, new this year, did a lot of the work: 4,739 ballots, just over half of all votes, came in online. It's still short of 2018's 59%, which the Town says hasn't been beaten.

The Town posted official results on Tuesday. The new term officially starts Nov. 15, and the new council is sworn in on Tuesday, Nov. 24. Until then, Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa and the current council are still in office. "It's been a great four years," Zalepa said on election night.

During the campaign, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change asked candidates in NOTL, Lincoln and St. Catharines to sign a farm worker safety pledge. Across the three towns, two of the three mayors-elect and 12 of 24 councillors-elect signed it. The ask includes safer shoulders, lighting and crossings on the rural roads workers walk and cycle after dark. It comes four months after Sinhue Garcia, a 39-year-old father of two, was killed cycling home in NOTL in June. The group wants every new councillor, signed or not, to meet with workers in their first year.

The Poppy Project is back. On Monday, volunteers covered the fronts of four NOTL buildings, including the Old Court House and the NOTL Museum, with handmade knitted and crocheted poppies, about 10,000 per building. More than 40 volunteers put in over 6,000 hours making them. The tradition started in 2021 with museum members. Worth a walk down Queen Street before Remembrance Day, Nov. 11.

Last week we told you to stop in for a period at the Harvest Classic. If you did, you saw something: 32 teams came from across Canada, the NOTL Wolves U15s won their final 6-0 over Norfolk, and the U16s beat Glancaster 3-1. The U18s lost a 2-1 final to Casselman-Embrun. Credit to the volunteers, who started planning in June.

NOTL's visitor ambassadors had more than 79,000 conversations with visitors between May and mid-October, up about 27% from last year, from 118 countries. But the Shaw saw attendance dip in July and August, especially from Americans, and its executive director thinks people are shortening trips as costs rise. Shops are adapting: one Queen Street gallery is asking artists for smaller, cheaper pieces (more in the Spotlight below).

All of November, the Irish Harp on King Street is one of five Niagara restaurants in United Way's Ultimate Burger Battle, its first year in Niagara. Each one makes a signature burger, at least $2 from every one sold goes to United Way's local programs, and you scan a QR code to rate it out of 10. People's Choice gets crowned at the end of the month. The Harp is the only NOTL entry, so you know what to do.

The first public open house for the Queen Street Secondary Plan, the Town's study of what the downtown core should look like for the next couple of decades, is Tuesday, Nov. 17. If you have opinions about heritage, parking or what gets built on Queen, this is where they count.

Trick-or-treating here comes with the usual NOTL problem: dark, narrow streets with no sidewalks in a lot of neighbourhoods. The Town's advice is reflective clothing, a flashlight per kid, and an adult with the little ones. One more Saturday deadline: if you run a B&B, inn or short-term rental, your Municipal Accommodation Tax remittance is due Oct. 31.

Concession 7 Road stays fully closed between York Road and just north of Queenston Road for the Modero subdivision work, about five weeks from Oct. 19. Plan around it into late November.

In partnership with Evan McCaughey

With the election behind us, it's a good moment to think about where you want to be in NOTL. If you've been wondering what your place is worth before the spring market, Evan McCaughey of The Sykes Real Estate Team at RE/MAX Niagara will tell you straight.

Still on the market: 130 John Street. The end-unit freehold townhome with 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and a private fenced yard, a short walk from the lake.

Buying or selling in NOTL? Call or text Evan at 289-968-8128.

Sponsored

On Saturday night, both of NOTL's village firehalls throw a free Halloween party. In Queenston (5 Dumfries St.), doors open at 7pm with a costume parade at 7:15, a barbecue, candy and prizes. It's run with Huebel Grapes Estates in support of Project SHARE, so bring a non-perishable food donation. In St. Davids (745 Warner Rd.), same time, with a costume contest and prizes. Trick-or-treat early, then go. The firefighters do this for the town every year, and the costumes get competitive.

This is the fort's last weekend of the season, and it's doing Halloween twice. On Saturday from 10am to 2pm, kids in costume get treats while they trick-or-treat around the grounds, with musket demonstrations thrown in (regular admission). After dark, the Friends of Fort George run their last lantern-lit ghost tours Friday through Sunday. Those are $25, online only, nothing sold at the gate. Little kids in the morning, older kids at night.

Grown-ups only? Exchange Brewery's "Boos, Brews & Banter" comedy night is Friday at 8pm ($34, or $90 with dinner).

Tom Chapman runs the Upper Canada Native Art Gallery in Old Town, and this year he did something most galleries wouldn't: he asked his artists to make their work smaller.

"Hey, can you scale this down? Make it more travel-friendly and approachable for a first-time buyer," is how he put it to the Indigenous artists he works with. The reason is tariffs. A $10,000 sculpture could cost an American buyer about $5,000 more once it crosses the border, so the gallery stopped shipping to the U.S. altogether. Instead of chasing the big sale, Chapman went after the visitor who wants to take something home in a carry-on.

It's working. Foot traffic is up more than 20% this year.

It's a small story with a bigger point for every shop on Queen Street: visitors are still coming, they're just making smaller decisions. The businesses doing well this year are the ones that met them there. Find the gallery in Old Town, and look for the pieces that fit in a suitcase.

This week: one thing for day one. The new council is sworn in Nov. 24. If you could put one thing on their desk for their first day, what would it be? Hit reply. We'll share the most common answers, and the best ones, in a future issue.