Vaughn Goettler doesn’t just want Niagara-on-the-Lake to hire him — he wants them to let him give away the paycheque.
“I’m putting my money where my mouth is,” the lord mayoral candidate said at the Chamber of Commerce’s Oct. 14 debate at Vineridge Academy, pledging to donate his salary to children’s recreational programs and charities.
The business operator offered voters a different bargain: judge him by his experience running businesses rather than holding office.
But his promise to run NOTL like a business drew pushback from rivals Andrea Kaiser and Erwin Wiens, who argued a municipality’s first job is to provide services.
A town run like a business?
Goettler argued his business background offered something his opponents’ political experience did not.
“Both Andrea and Erwin have campaigned on their political experience,” he said. “I bring my own experience. Demonstrated experience, real-world experience, bottom-line experience.”
He said the town must control its spending to deliver the services residents need.
“If you don’t run your household correctly — if you spend more than you make — you lose your house,” said Goettler. “If you do that in business, you lose your business.”
Wiens challenged the comparison.
“Businesses have one guy at the top and they make the decisions. In a municipality, there’s six councillors moving forward, and a mayor, and 19,000 residents that need to be listened to, and they all matter,” he said.
Kaiser pushed back as well. “Because a business, in my mind, is primarily about making money.”
“For me, running a town is about the residents, the people, the services, the things they need,” said Kaiser, as she pointed to youth programs, seniors’ needs and social services.
Goettler maintained financial discipline was how the town could afford those responsibilities.
He promised to remove town fees for recreational activities and community centres for one year while seeking a lasting solution, saying administrative savings would pay for the change.
A pause on development
The next council faces a costly problem: the town’s infrastructure review identified an annual funding gap of about $13.1 million. NOTL needs roughly $22.3 million a year to maintain its infrastructure but has about $9.2 million in sustainable funding.
Goettler proposed to stop new development until an infrastructure plan is ready.
“It’s time for a big pause,” he said, adding that he would restore resident committees and complete an infrastructure plan within his first 100 days.
“In those 100 days, we will have accomplished an infrastructure plan that we will know we can move forward with,” Goettler promised.
“We will be able to turn the light on to development as soon as we have that.”
Wiens argued the current council had already laid the groundwork through increased capital spending and a plan to assess, maintain and replace municipal infrastructure.
“We’re doing all of that through an asset management plan,” he said, noting he’ll “continue to do that.”
Kaiser said NOTL can grow responsibly while protecting farmland, heritage, the environment, village character and residents’ quality of life — but making climate resilience a priority would be essential to achieving that balance.
She called for climate resilience to guide every infrastructure project, with rain gardens, permeable surfaces, green space and trees helping keep water out of overloaded systems.
Keep the powers or reject them?
The candidates disagreed over the authority they would use to carry out their plans.
Goettler rejected strong-mayor powers outright.
“The more I am learning about what’s going on in our province, the more opposed I am to them,” he added.
Kaiser would retain them, pointing to the value of a mayor-prepared draft budget that councillors could propose changing.
“I’d just like to assure you that it would be in collaboration with all of council and that they would have the ability to amend,” she told the audience.
Wiens also defended the powers as useful tools, particularly for budgeting, while pledging restraint.
“I have no intention of pushing anything through that the rest of the council does not want to have, or the population doesn’t want to have,” he said.
Who can protect NOTL?
All three candidates opposed amalgamation, each arguing they could help stop it.
Wiens warned that losing NOTL’s independence would put every other promise at risk: “All bets are off.”
He argued relationships built during eight years on council and work with a coalition of eight municipalities made him uniquely qualified to resist amalgamation.
“I am the only candidate that can successfully hold off amalgamation forces over the next four years,” Wiens said.
Goettler argued the current council’s approach had not removed the threat of amalgamation and pledged to build alliances with smaller municipalities to protect NOTL’s interests.
“We are already well into amalgamation whether we like it or not, because we haven’t done anything in the last eight years to avoid that,” he said.
“What we’ve been doing doesn’t work, or it wouldn’t be on the table.”
Kaiser emphasized being the only candidate with regional council experience, arguing those relationships could both help resist amalgamation and secure more services for NOTL.
“The lord mayor will be Niagara-on-the-Lake’s only elected representative at regional council, so my experience at the region, at this time, at this juncture, is particularly important,” she said.
Three different answers on the roundabout
The debate included a lightning round, with candidates raising green cards for agreement or red cards for opposition, then briefly explaining their positions.
Asked whether the St. Davids roundabout should be completed, the three candidates gave different answers.
Goettler opposed completing it, calling the work a waste of time and money.
Kaiser supported continuing because of the investment and detailed design already completed.
Wiens declined to choose a clear side, saying he needed more information from the region about the project’s benefit to NOTL.
Whether it’s a roundabout, a development proposal or the town’s budget, voters have less than a week to decide whose judgment they trust.
