Dear editor:

Andrea Kaiser deserves credit for continuing to raise Niagara-on-the-Lake’s unusually high policing costs (“Region to review NOTL’s policing bill,” Sept. 3). But after nearly 15 years in elected municipal office — about 11 years on town council and almost four representing us at the Region — residents are entitled to ask what has actually changed.

Kaiser says she identified the problem while on town council. Yet the allocation formula has not changed and NOTL taxpayers have received no relief.

Perhaps it is time to go beyond asking who pays the bill and start asking what is driving the bill and how we can contain it.

Let’s get the data.

How many police, ambulance and fire calls involve visitors rather than residents? How many involve traffic collisions, cyclists, short-term rentals or emergencies during peak visitor periods? What does serving millions of visitors cost a municipality of only about 20,000 residents?

Visitors away from home inevitably place different demands on a community. They drive unfamiliar rural roads, cycle unfamiliar routes and stay in accommodations without the support they have at home. Our roads and villages must absorb the resulting traffic and emergency response.

We have experienced serious and fatal bicycle and automobile collisions. We should not attribute those tragedies to tourism without evidence. But they demonstrate why increasing traffic on rural roads has consequences — including demands on police, ambulance and fire services.

This matters because emergency-service capacity is expensive. If continually increasing visitor volumes eventually requires millions of dollars in additional fire, ambulance or policing capacity, every taxpayer pays, whether they benefit from tourism or not.

That brings us back to tourism policy.

I recently argued in these pages that we should “invite guests, not traffic,” (“Letter: Stop manufacturing the parking problem,” Sept. 3). The same principle applies here. Tourism policy should be judged not just by what visitors spend, but by the public costs their visits create.

Municipal accommodation tax revenue gives council an opportunity to change the incentives. The organization chosen to market and manage tourism should have measurable objectives that favour higher-value, longer-staying visitors rather than simply greater visitor volume.

Its governance matters too. Responsible accommodation operators have a particular stake in sustainable tourism. They provide parking and, importantly, staff who can assist their guests when problems arise.

Residents, who ultimately pay for municipal services, also deserve a meaningful voice.

Council should establish those expectations before selecting the organization that receives public tourism money, through an open and transparent process with clear criteria and accountability for results.

Kaiser’s policing initiative provides an opportunity to do something more ambitious than redistributing an ever-growing bill.

Find out what is creating the demand. Measure the cost. Then work with the town to reduce it.

And every candidate for lord mayor and council should tell residents whether they support that approach.

Tourism should contribute more to Niagara-on-the-Lake than it costs the community to accommodate it.

Invite guests, not traffic.

Bruce Gitelman
NOTL