Dear editor:
We, from Save Our Rand Estate, write to respond to Peter Rusin’s letter in the July 2 edition (“Letter: Save Our Rand Estate stays silent on latest Ontario Land Tribunal ruling“).
Mr. Rusin is correct about only one thing: that the tribunal recently ruled against us on a motion argued last September that we could proceed with an application to rectify the zoning bylaw on 144/176 John St.
The rest of his letter is full of falsehoods that we were sorely tempted to ignore. We have decided however, to reply.
First, in no way did the tribunal find that SORE’s application was “improper, mischievous and troublesome” — an incorrect and false characterization by Mr. Rusin.
Quite the contrary, the tribunal acknowledged that SORE’s application was solely to correct an alleged error in the zoning bylaw and made no finding on the merits of SORE’s application.
The Ontario Land Tribunal simply found that municipalities were within their right to ask for an owner’s signature on such applications, notwithstanding that both the Planning Act and several cases indicate clearly otherwise. This is why SORE is considering its review options for what we believe is an erroneous decision.
Second, Mr. Rusin is kidding himself if he believes SORE is an anonymous group, lacking broad-based community support and draining the town’s tax revenue for legal expenses.
If he had attended the Jan. 18, 2018 meeting on Mr. Marotta’s original hotel proposal, he would have seen 600 to 700 of us.
If he attended the special council meeting on April 23, 2023 to approve the Denise Horne report, he would have seen several hundred of us.
If he had attended any public meeting, tribunal or court hearing on the Rand Estate over the past last nine years, he would have seen us out in droves.
SORE has more than 600 households who have signed up to receive our emails. We are taxpayers and residents in Niagara-on-the-Lake and anything but anonymous.
Third, with respect to legal bills and SORE “defaming the Marotta family,” we urge Mr. Rusin to spend some time reading the SORE website, where he will discover the lengthy history of the Rand litigation — all of which has been initiated by the Marotta companies. Not by the Town of NOTL, nor by SORE.
Mr. Marotta has challenged every single decision of the elected council with respect to Rand going back to the Darte council decision to designate the Rand Estate under the Heritage Act in 2018. Every single decision. Both the town and SORE have been awarded significant costs by the courts as Mr. Marotta loses or abandons his court appeals.
If there’s a concern about the amount of money the town has spent on Rand legal proceedings, Mr. Rusin should take it up with Mr. Marotta — an aggressive developer who has fought the town at every turn for the last nine years when it didn’t bend to his wishes.
The Marotta strategy has clearly been to try to bury the town in litigation. We applaud three successive councils in standing up to his bully tactics.
With respect to the recent Ontario Land Tribunal decision on our motion, as noted above, we question the outcome, given all the case law clearly stating that the landowner’s signature is not required.
We have been considering our options on seeking a review of that decision. That process is ongoing and in the interim, our efforts have been focused entirely on the latest outrageous Marotta application for one of the largest Ritz-Carlton hotels in the world.
The Ritz-Carlton application clearly underlines the wisdom of clarifying the Rand Estate 144/176 John St. zoning bylaw, as Mr. Marotta now seeks approval for a hotel of some 85 feet high (including architectural features), which is almost three times what the 2011 council understood it was permitting in approving the Romance Inn.
Mr. Rusin should get his facts straight before penning his next letter to the editor. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not to a set of alternative facts.
Judy McLeod
SORE Association
