Steve McGuinness says too much of Niagara-on-the-Lake politics revolves around developers, tourism and special interests. And not enough around the people paying the bills.
Now, the Virgil resident and founder of Residents 4 A Better NOTL is stepping into the political arena himself, officially registering to run for town council last week.
In an interview, McGuinness said the biggest threat facing the town is the pace and development of scale in town.
He wants to bring what he calls a “Jill and Joe average NOTLers” perspective to council and argues ordinary homeowners are too often overlooked in debates over planning and growth.
“We have agriculture, we have tourism, culture. All of those interests are important,” he said. “But when you look at the big picture, the majority of people living in town, they’re not farmers, they don’t own a tourist-related business.”
He said residential taxpayers are ultimately the backbone of the town’s finances and deserve more focus at the council table.
A retired member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario with an MBA from McMaster University, McGuinness spent much of his career working in finance on Bay Street before retiring in 2018.
This is his first run for council.
“It’s a thankless job,” he said of being a councillor. But after years acting as what he describes as a community organizer and local opinion leader, he said he decided “someone has to stand up.”
“We have to balance opposing with proposing,” he said.
Planning and development quickly emerged as one of his biggest campaign themes. McGuinness said the town needs to be far more careful about approving developments that require official plan or zoning bylaw amendments.
“If we approve a planning development that’s a disaster, we’re stuck with it permanently,” he said.
He pointed to the debate around the former hospital site on Wellington Street as an example of where he said the town needs to think carefully about long-term land use.
McGuinness criticized early concepts centred heavily around parking and said he would like to see the town pursue outside proposals for the property sooner rather than later.
“There’s also the option of going for requests for proposals from third parties,” he said. “I’d like to see that pursued sooner rather than later.”
“I think there’s some good ideas emerging, like the Burton Foundation proposal has a lot of merit to it.”
He also pointed to Parliament Oak as an example of development he said went too far.
“I don’t want to see another travesty like what happened at Parliament Oak,” he said. “It goes beyond the scale of what we should be seeing in residential neighbourhoods.”
McGuinness also weighed in on the controversial Royal George Theatre redevelopment, saying the issue was never about opposing the Shaw Festival itself.
“Everyone supports the Shaw Festival. It’s an important cultural institution,” he said. Still, he said residents raised legitimate concerns about the scale of the project, parking pressures and neighbourhood disruption.
“There isn’t going to be any parking there. So, parking constantly becomes an issue,” he said. “We really struggled with it as a town.”
McGuinness also addressed local Pride-related tensions that surfaced this year between municipalities, Pride Niagara and OUTNiagara.
A member of the LGBTQ+ community himself, he said the town needs to be careful to send inclusive messages.
“I think we need to be very careful that we send the right messaging and that we’re inclusive,” he said.
He said he plans to support NOTL’s June 1 Pride flag raising event and added town leadership, such as the lord mayor, could be more visible on the issue.
McGuinness also criticized the town’s current media relations approach under chief administrative officer Nick Ruller that affects responses to opinion writers and media inquiries.
“You don’t want to restrict access along those lines,” he said, calling the policy “a bit of a rookie mistake.”
“It shouldn’t be like pulling teeth.”
On enforcement issues, McGuinness said some developers appear to treat town penalties as little more than a business expense.
“There are developers in town who do that and I don’t mind calling out one developer, in particular, who is notorious for it,” he said. “That is Benny Marotta.”
Marotta is the founder of Solmar Development Corp. and co-owns Two Sisters Vineyards in NOTL with his daughters.
Marotta did not respond to The Lake Report’s request for comment before deadline.
“If we impose a $500-a-day penalty at Parliament Oak, that’s just the cost of doing business to (Marotta),” McGuinness said. “It’s not an effective deterrent.”
The amount of property tax paid by major developers may be significant to the town, he said, “but they still have to abide by the rules.”
“You can be fined up to a million dollars — I think he needs significant penalties,” he said. “Otherwise, there’s no deterrent and there’s no respect for the bylaws.”
McGuinness lives in NOTL with his spouse of 21 years, Gary. The couple has two adult children and two school-aged grandchildren.
And, according to his campaign announcement, residents who spot him walking around town will likely also see Lucy, his eight-year-old yellow lab, tagging along beside him.
