🗳️ The $13 million question on your ballot

~ NOTL News Crew

This was the week a crew of Niagara College trades students was scheduled to start raising the frame for "Three Sisters" on Niagara Stone Road, a 16-foot thank-you to the people who farm this town. On Wednesday, a few concessions over, a different group stood on Concession 6 Road and put up reflective signs where a farmworker biking home was killed in June. Same fields, same week, two very different ways of saying the people who grow our food matter. And Saturday is the busiest day on the civic calendar all month: the last advance poll and Doors Open both start at 10am, and both are at 14 Anderson Lane. You can vote and tour a 149-year-old lawn bowling club without moving the car.

Every village in this election has its own complaint. Flooded basements in St. Davids. Speeders in Queenston. Hotels in Old Town. Strip away the details and most of them land on the same line in the same Town report: NOTL is about $13 million a year behind on looking after what it already owns.

That number isn't a campaign talking point. It comes from the Town's own asset management work, which put a price on roughly 30,000 pieces of public infrastructure. In June, council backed a long-term plan to start closing the gap. Staff estimated it would take roughly a 1.5% tax levy increase every year for 20 years, on top of inflation, just to get tax-funded assets to 70% of where they should be. Stormwater would need about 4.3% a year. Water and sewer rates would go up too. The plan isn't binding, and every one of those increases still has to survive a budget vote. "Better buckle up for the next budget," Coun. Erwin Wiens said at the time.

Whoever wins on Oct. 26 inherits that math. At the NOTLRA's Lord Mayor forum, all three candidates were asked about taxes and about flooding and drainage. Here's what they said, in alphabetical order.

Vaughn Goettler gave the only hard number on taxes: "My goal would be to hold taxes to not more than inflation," he said, adding, "I don't know if I can do that yet." On infrastructure, he went furthest: a moratorium on new development "until we understand where our infrastructure is at," a Town-backed program for backwater valves to keep sewage out of basements, and cleaner ditches and bigger culverts. His argument is that enforcing the official plan and bylaws would cut the legal fights and settlements that cost taxpayers money.

Andrea Kaiser said the real tax fight is at the Region. NOTL has the lowest municipal tax rate in Niagara, she said, but its high property values mean residents pay more than their share of regional costs, including policing at "north of $700 per household" against roughly $400 in the next town down. She didn't set a number for town taxes. She opposed a development moratorium as a likely legal loss, and said infrastructure capacity should be a condition of big development through the official plan, new zoning and capital budgets built around climate resilience.

Erwin Wiens said taxes should be talked about "in dollars and not just percentages": the last four years of increases came to about $350 for the average resident, "about $1 a day," and roughly 65% of the bill goes to the Region. He promised not to ask for "one more dollar" until the Town finds efficiencies, and pointed to the asset management plan as the roadmap for the next decade. On flooding, he said brushing ditches instead of clearing them was an earlier call, and "we now know that we need to go into a different direction."

Here's the tension. The Town's own plan assumes taxes rise faster than inflation for two decades. One candidate wants to hold taxes to inflation. One says the money is really at the Region. One says find efficiencies first, then follow the plan. They can't all be right, and NOTL has had the same three worries (taxes, development, transparency) since the last election.

If a candidate knocks on your door this week, skip "what do you stand for." Ask: "How do you close the $13 million?"

If most of your tax bill goes to the Region, this one matters. A new provincial proposal would let Niagara's shrunken regional council use weighted voting on matters the Region chooses. Votes would scale with population, roughly one per 20,000 residents (in the Province's example, a city of about 137,000 gets 7), and any town under 20,000 gets one. That likely puts NOTL at a single vote. The NOTLRA, in an email to members titled "Is this where democracy comes to die?", argues the three biggest municipalities could outvote the other nine, and is asking mayoral candidates to commit to "one vote, one municipality." The Region would decide which issues get weighted, so the next Lord Mayor gets a say. The proposal is open for comment on Ontario's Regulatory Registry.

On Wednesday, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change put up giant reflective "Look Out For Migrant Workers" signs on Concession 6 Road, where farmworker Sinhue Garcia was killed biking home in June, and at four other spots where, the group says, seven migrant workers have been killed or seriously injured. More are going up outside municipal offices in NOTL, St. Catharines and Lincoln. The group wants a road safety audit done with workers and a coroner's inquest, and says 36 of 63 municipal candidates across the three towns have signed its safety pledge. With most workers heading home for the season, its question is simple: what will be different when they're back in the spring?

The last in-person advance poll is this Saturday, Oct. 17, 10am to 6pm, in the Simpson Room at the Community Centre (online voting runs to 8pm Oct. 25; Election Day is Monday, Oct. 26). One heads-up if you're voting for council: Karen Taylor-Jones, known by that name around town for years (think Taylor-Jones Painting & Wallpapering), is listed on the ballot as Karen Jones-Taylor. Her campaign says Town staff suggested that format when she filed; the Town says it doesn't advise candidates on how to fill out their forms. Same person either way. And if you were waiting on the residents' association to tell you who to pick, it won't: the NOTLRA board voted not to endorse anyone. Worth knowing: turnout here was about 47% in 2022, when the Lord Mayor race was decided by 1,138 votes.

Niagara Now asked residents in every village what the next council should fix. Old Town: hotels, with one resident wanting occupancy numbers before another is approved. Queenston: short-term rentals, with a call to cap them village by village, plus slower traffic near the daycare. Glendale: absentee landlords and student parking blind spots near the college. St. Davids: flooding, with one resident wanting dam mechanisms tested monthly "if not weekly." And in Garrison Village, a resident who thinks the town has swung too far against development called the planning process "very unorganized." Lifelong Old Towner Deborah Dutton summed up her confidence in decision-makers in two words: "No trust."

Starting Monday, Oct. 19 (weather permitting), Concession 7 Road is fully closed from York Road to just north of Queenston Road, emergency vehicles only, for about five weeks of servicing and road work for the approved Modero subdivision. Follow the detour signs. If it feels like every route has a cone on it, here's the rest: Line 2 is being rebuilt between Concession 6 and Niagara Stone Road, Mississagua Street between Mary and Queen is getting new sewers, watermain, sidewalks and lighting, the Line 7 watermain work continues, Dee Road is being reconstructed, and work has started on a cross pipe at the Six Mile Creek dam on Queenston Road. Questions: 905-468-3266.

The Air Canada motorcoach between Niagara District Airport and Toronto Pearson goes from three daily departures to five on Dec. 14. New times from NOTL: 5:20am, 11:10am, 1:10pm, 4pm and 7:10pm, about 80 minutes each way. The ride is included when you book an Air Canada itinerary that starts or ends at the airport, and parking there is free. Timed nicely for holiday flights.

The Shaw Festival's Positive Aging program is back this fall in its new Burton Centre for Lifelong Creativity at the Shaw Artists' Village, taught by Shaw Company artists. Coming up: Digital Safety, on recognizing scams and protecting your personal info (Tue Oct. 20), Improv for Nimble Minds (Oct. 21) and Confi-Dance! for strength and balance (Oct. 23, then weekly through November). The big one is the free, drop-in CARE Summit on Saturday, Nov. 7, 9:30am to 3pm, with workshops, speakers and local groups including the Alzheimer Society Niagara Region and NOTL Palliative Care Services. "If isolation and loneliness are the disease, gathering and creativity are the cure," says Shaw executive director Tim Jennings.

Spirit in Niagara's Virgin Oak Single Cask Whisky won Double Gold at the 2026 SIP Awards, a competition judged by consumers. It's a 55.6% cask-strength pour, barrelled in April 2022 ($96.69). The distillery at 458 Lakeshore Rd. also just released Brrrbon Reserve, a small-batch whisky aged four years ($64.90). Both are at the shop and online.

On Thanksgiving Sunday, 34 runners and walkers set out from near the Floral Clock in Queenston for Run for Niagara, the fourth annual 5K and 2K by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association, raising money for the Niagara Health Foundation. Rain and the long weekend kept numbers down, but NOTL family team the Litt Legends took two of the top three spots in the 2K. "It's kind of nice, just like a family outing, and you're supporting the local community," said Priya Litt.

November birthdays and anniversaries for the Town's monthly milestones go to [email protected] by Tuesday, Oct. 20.

In partnership with Evan McCaughey

Fall is when NOTL's real estate market gets quiet and the serious buyers come out. If you've been wondering what your place is worth before the spring rush, 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

Sixteen buildings that are usually locked, roped off or ticketed open for free on Saturday, 10am to 5pm, for Doors Open NOTL. Do Old Town on foot. Start at Niagara Lodge No. 2 on King Street, which hosted Upper Canada's first legislature. Walk to the Niagara Apothecary on Queen, a working pharmacy from the late 1860s until 1964. Then go backstage at the Shaw Festival Theatre on the hourly tour (last one at 3). Finish at the Exchange Brewery, Niagara's first telephone exchange, which opens at 11.

If you'd rather drive the escarpment than walk Queen Street, take the other half. Start at the Mackenzie Printery (1 Queenston St.), home of the Louis Roy Press, Canada's oldest wooden printing press, which printed Ontario's first newspaper and the 1793 Act Against Slavery. Volunteers will run the Linotype and Heidelberg presses all day, and you can print something yourself (stairs only inside, limited parking). Then RiverBrink Art Museum, where two of its four exhibitions close that day, and Willowbank, the 1834 Hamilton estate that now trains heritage restoration specialists. End at Ravine Vineyard in St. Davids: tours on the hour until 4, open until 8.

Until this year, the Saturday market in Garrison Village ran out of a parking lot. This season, organizer Sandra Neufeld moved it onto the new green at Clayfield Commons, and it turned into something closer to what the neighbourhood was designed for.

It started small, with vendors lined along a single laneway. "It had sort of a European walkable vibe," Neufeld said. By midsummer it had spilled around the whole green, and it wrapped the season last weekend with 24 vendors and a Thanksgiving crowd stocking up.

The vendors noticed. Samantha Sutherland of the Hive, five seasons in, says the new spot "attracts more people from out of town." Alpine Nurseries just finished its first year. And Koru & Crust's meat pies have built a following: two older regulars split one every Saturday, and when one of them had a birthday, the whole market sang to him. A first-timer tried one and gave the verdict: "I've been to New Zealand so I know a good meat pie."

Laura Townsend of the Clayfield Hotel says Garrison Village was laid out with the market in mind, with stall space on both sides of the walkway, and the hope is more retailers, cafés and vendors next year.

It's done for 2026. Put it on the list for spring: Saturdays, Clayfield Commons.

This week: Voted in the poll above? Tell us why. If the next council could fix one thing on your street, just one, what would it be? Tell us your village too. The best answers and the poll results run next week, in our last issue before Election Day.

Just hit reply to this email.