Affordable housing key for incoming Fort Erie regional councillor
When the advance polls came in showing he had a narrow one per cent lead, Tom Insinna knew it was going to be a long election night.
“I was biting my nails all night,” said Insinna, who won Fort Erie’s lone Niagara regional council seat in the Oct. 22 municipal election. The first poll showed Insinna out front, but he didn't win the second poll. His fortunes flipped when another poll was announced. The back and forth continued as each of the nine tabulation machines in Fort Erie spit out their results.
“We were all getting really nervous, especially as it started flip-flopping,” he said. “It was back and forth and back and forth until that final one came in, and then when it was official, I just started screaming.”
On paper, Insinna was a major underdog. He was up against incumbent, Sandy Annunziata, who has both strong name recognition on the ballot and deep roots in the community.
Annunziata also helped bring more regional dollars to Fort Erie in his one term than any other regional councillor in the town’s history: more than $20 million to fix Dominion
Road; $5 million to relocate and expand Garrison Lodge; and another $1 million to redevelop Bay Beach. But that wasn’t enough to overcome a scandalplagued regional council and turmoil at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.
In the end, Insinna held on with a narrow three per cent margin across an even ward split, where Annunziata won all three wards in the town’s east end, while Insinna won Crystal Beach, Ridgeway and Stevensville.
“People told me this fight was going to be won at the doors, so that’s what we did. We went and knocked on as many doors as we possibly could. I think we spent about four hours a day just walking.”
Insinna said he plans to focus on many of the same issues he heard from residents while going door to door.
“The No. 1 thing I heard was that we need more affordable housing,” he said. “Our residents need places to live and they need those places to be affordable, so I’ve got some meetings to set up with different agencies about moving those plans forward.”
He also said he wants to take a close look at the plans to move the Garrison Lodge long term-care facility out to the site of the abandoned County Fair Mall. With such a large space, Insinna said he wants to make sure the entire site is developed so that health and medical service providers could move into the commercial space along Garrison Road in front of the new lodge.