Niagara-on-the-Lake households are being charged hundreds of dollars more for regional policing than households anywhere else in Niagara — and regional government is now looking at whether there is a different way to split the bill.
Based on 2024 average household assessment, NOTL’s regional policing costs worked out to $786 per household per year. The next-highest municipality, Grimsby, was at $458 per household, while Welland, the lowest, was at $255.
Regional Coun. Andrea Kaiser, who is running for lord mayor in this fall’s municipal election, has pushed for a review of that system since returning to elected office in 2022, after first raising concerns about the issue during her time on NOTL council years ago.
In June, regional council directed staff to initiate the review.
“This is an issue I first identified when I was serving on municipal council, and I believed it was important to keep working on it when I returned to elected office at the region,” Kaiser said in a media backgrounder sent to The Lake Report.
The gap comes from the way Niagara divides policing costs among its municipalities. The current system relies primarily on property assessment, rather than how much a municipality makes use of the police’s services.
In June 2025, regional council passed Kaiser’s motion directing staff to examine alternatives to relying on property assessment. Options included charging on a per-household basis, using development charges for future police infrastructure and creating tiered levies.
“To my knowledge, this was the first time regional council had agreed to formally review the policing cost allocation model,” Kaiser said. “This was never about reducing the quality of policing services. It was about asking whether the way we share those costs across Niagara is fair.”
The first staff report that followed “effectively recommended maintaining the existing approach” and did not fully address the alternatives requested in the motion, the backgrounder said.
Kaiser and other councillors on the corporate services committee pushed to send the report back to staff to complete the original request and more fully examine alternatives to the assessment-based system. Regional council supported that referral in March.
The issue moved beyond that initial staff work this June, when regional council directed staff to begin a review of the policing cost-allocation model itself. The review is to consider factors such as service calls and other measures of policing demand and to explore working with the Niagara Police Service Board.
Kaiser says there is no simple answer to how policing costs should be divided, but the review creates a path to consider alternatives.
“There is no simple solution,” she said. “There is more to be done but this is a significant step forward in a more equitable way to levy policing costs in Niagara.”
