Dear editor:
The conversation around amalgamation deserves honest language. What is being proposed under the four-city model is not governance reform — it is the redistribution of a well-run community’s resources to subsidize the failures of another.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of the most fiscally disciplined municipalities in the region. We run lean, maintain our infrastructure and manage our budget responsibly. Niagara Falls, by its own mayor’s admission, carries a $110-million infrastructure deficit and water and wastewater systems that are 50 per cent poor or failing.
Merging these two realities doesn’t fix anything. It forces NOTL taxpayers to absorb costs they had no part in creating, governed by a council where our 19,000 residents would be permanently outvoted by Niagara Falls’ 100,000.
The dysfunction that regional chair Gale has rightly identified, red tape, duplication, ballooning tax increases, originates at the regional tier, not at our town hall. Amalgamating lower-tier municipalities does not solve regional-level problems. It punishes the communities that have been doing things right.
Any government that values fiscal responsibility should reward good management, not penalize it. Any government that believes in local autonomy should trust communities closest to the ground. Any government that champions accountability should strengthen representation, not dilute it. Forced amalgamation moves in the opposite direction on all counts.
NOTL’s identity is not sentimental, it is economic. Our heritage district, wine country, agricultural lands and the Shaw Festival generate significant tourism revenue precisely because local leaders have had the authority to protect them. Under an amalgamated council dominated by Niagara Falls’ priorities, those assets face development pressures from interests that do not share ours.
Residents should look beyond the promise of a simple democratic majority and recognize what this truly represents: the dilution of NOTL’s small population into a Niagara Falls municipality that has its own significant problems and is effectively looking to solve them by absorbing ours.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is not the problem. We should not be asked to pay as though we are.
Matthew Lush
NOTL
