Dear editor:
Maybe our esteemed deputy lord mayor should get his facts clarified before wading into the weeds defending his administration and planning staff (“Letter: Setting the record straight on planning in Niagara-on-the-Lake,” Sept. 11).
First of all, over a year ago, on June 6, 2024, Bill 185, the Cutting Red Tape To Build More Homes Act, removed the authority to require, by bylaw, mandatory pre-application consultation prior to the submission of a planning application.
Which, perhaps, explains the idiocy of having the recent public meeting and open house held on Solmar’s application for access, boundary and zoning issues with respect to 200 John St. E.
If there was “pre-consultation,” do you not think staff would have explained to Solmar the issues had already been thoroughly and irrevocably decided by the Ontario Land Tribunal last year, instead of determining the application was “complete,” necessitating the needless expense of conducting yet another public meeting and open house?
Our deputy lord mayor goes on to state that approvals don’t automatically favour developers and that numerous applications are negotiated to protect heritage, reduce building scale or incorporate sustainability measures.
One presumes one such negotiation involved the parking at the “Parliament Oaks Hotel,” for which deputy lord mayor Erwin Wiens subsequently made the motion to show town support for the reduction of the total of development charges by close to $1 million to be paid to the region for the extra level of underground parking.
That’s a million dollars more in taxes being paid by Niagara Region taxpayers.
And then he has the nerve to complain about the money spent defending the town against developer-initiated land tribunal and legal challenges and has the temerity to suggest the town has lost every single one?
During the four-year period mentioned Mr. Marotta’s companies filed and withdrew applications to the Ontario Land Tribunal, the conservation review board and lost a Superior Court challenge to the heritage designation of the Rand Estate for which the town was compensated over $100,000 in legal fees.
Speaking of transparency, how is it that our town’s website in September 2025 still doesn’t have the financial statement for 2024 available for public scrutiny? Especially since council is now starting on budgeting for 2026.
The only telling information about the town’s current finances was the information report to council regarding the final approval of 2025 budget on March 18, which, amongst other things, contained a comparison of municipalities in the region with NOTL having a 7.92 per cent increase in 2025, fully 3 per cent higher than any other municipality in the region.
That and the interesting historical chart that shows approved tax levy dollar impact on the average household, which totalled $208.44 during the four years of the previous council’s term and $321.97 during only the first three years of this deputy lord mayor’s term.
It’s one thing to throw slings and arrows about the failings of a previous administration when ignoring the accomplishments of that administration: the municipal accommodation tax, which has approximately $1.9 million in town capital reserves and has removed the need for funding many tourism related events, the 2019 official plan, which forms the blueprint for the current draft official plan and a comprehensive tackling of community issues in a respectful forum of ideas and communication without having to ever shut down a public meeting.
Bob Bader
NOTL
