A St. Davids resident who stopped a Niagara-on-the-Lake all-candidates debate Wednesday to demand action on sewage backing into homes said not one candidate on stage had earned his vote.
“To be honest with you, there is nobody up there that would get my vote,” said Reginald Huggins, the resident, in an interview with The Lake Report the next day.
Huggins stood up at the St. Davids Lions Club after the moderator announced the start of closing remarks. His question had not been selected and he was not willing to let the evening end without answers.
“Everybody here is getting backwater systems into their houses and no one’s telling us what the hell anybody’s going to do about it,” he said at the debate. “We’ve got insurance we got to worry about. We’ve got health we got to worry about. And no one here seems to care about it.”
Huggins took issue both with the moderator’s decision not to select his question and with candidates’ failure to raise sewage backups during their opening remarks or answers before his interruption.
Coun. Maria Mavridis told Huggins the town had submitted residents’ applications and was waiting for the province to act. Coun. Erwin Wiens confirmed, “We’re waiting for the province.”
Huggins pushed back.
“This happened two years ago. It was happening again this year and you guys are still waiting for the province,” he said. “Come on, you got to start helping us.”
He left before the debate ended.
“I shouldn’t have to blow up for them to speak about the biggest problem in St. Davids,” Huggins said in the interview.
Several candidates then began addressing the problem in their closing remarks.
Coun. Andrew Niven said Huggins had experienced sewage flooding three times in two years. He said he and the town’s chief administrative officer had recently sat down with Huggins inside his home.
“He was angry when I met with him as well, but he should be angry because he’s going through these issues,” Niven said.
He said Huggins’ problem appeared to involve a regional pumping station and the town was working with Niagara Region on a response to the issue.
“I think we’re going to have a direct line to the pumping station,” Niven said. “I think that would alleviate a lot of the issues.”
Coun. Sandra O’Connor pointed to two reports presented to council the previous night — one on flooding and another involving almost $425,000 in additional drainage work.
Council candidate Karen Jones-Taylor spoke about severe flooding at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 124, where she sits on the executive board. She said the branch may not reopen until next year.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “Something has to be done, something quickly, so it’s not happening over and over again.”
Coun. Tim Balasiuk said he was also flooded after filing three service requests with the town about a known problem that was not repaired.
“I am a resident first and a councillor second,” he said. “They knew the issue — and it didn’t get fixed — and I flooded.”
“I am going to be an advocate for you,” Balasiuk said.
Huggins said the problem in his Millpond Road neighbourhood is not ordinary rainwater flooding, but sewage entering people’s homes.
“Everything becomes a biohazard and everything has to be thrown out,” he said.
Sewage entered Huggins’ finished basement in 2024, forcing workers to cut out drywall and remove damaged belongings. He said his household spent more than a month in a hotel while the home was cleaned.
Among the losses were belongings purchased by his late wife and baseball equipment belonging to his son.
This year, flood detectors alerted the household when sewage began entering the basement again. Huggins said they used a vacuum and pump to remove it, saving some furniture that was raised off the floor. Anything sitting directly on the floor, including cabinets, was lost.
Now, he said, the basement must be ripped out again.
The damage has also left Huggins unable to use the basement “man cave” he built to relax and watch football. “I’m a real football fan,” he said.
“That’s all gone,” he said. “And I don’t have a timeline on when it’s going to get fixed.”
Huggins said residents in the Vintages and nearby neighbourhoods have met, gathered information and prepared a report they plan to send to the town, the region, the provincial and federal governments and Health Canada.
He did not expect candidates to produce an engineering solution on the spot. He wanted someone to acknowledge the urgency and promise to pursue both immediate relief and a permanent fix.
“I need somebody to give me something, some sense of confidence that they are going to look into doing something to help me and my neighbours,” he said.
The debate also covered missing sidewalks and crosswalks, the division of responsibility between the town and region, recreation funding, development proposals seeking multiple exceptions to town planning rules, candidates’ potential conflicts involving developers and the proposed roundabout at York and Four Mile Creek roads.
Recreation funding took centre stage after resident Ron Pychel warned candidates the town could miss the Dec. 22 application deadline for Ontario’s Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund.
The province launched the fund with $200 million in 2024 and added another $300 million this year, bringing its total value to $500 million. The program helps municipalities pay to repair and upgrade existing recreation facilities or build new ones.
Pychel accused the current council of having “slept through” the first funding opportunity and warned the next council would have little time to prepare an application.
“This is a travesty,” he said.
Several incumbent councillors said the town could not secure funding earlier because it did not have a “shovel-ready” project and lacked its share of the required funding.
“We’ve learned that lesson,” Coun. Adriana Cater-Vizzari said.
Council candidate Steve McGuinness pushed back on a remark by Wiens at Monday night’s lord mayor debate that some issues move at “the speed of government.”
“We need to move faster,” he said. “We’re not asking for a gift. We’re asking for a return in investment in our community.”
For Huggins, however, a pool and roundabout should not take priority while sewage continues entering homes.
“Why are you worrying about a damn pool,” he said, “but you’re not worrying about sewage backing up into someone’s house?”
