Dear editor:
Yes, NOTL is falling behind in updating our infrastructure as is pretty much every other municipality in Canada, (“Bumpy road ahead to fund better town infrastructure,” The Lake Report, May 2).
In the last 50 years, both the federal and provincial governments have abdicated their responsibilities by downloading the onus for services to the municipal level while at the same time stopping the funding.
Furthermore, it has been a herculean task to keep up with all of the other social services that the senior levels used to fund. Hence some municipalities have people living in tents under overpasses and in parks.
Worse, our provincial government has now embarked on severely limiting the local municipalities’ ability to plan, control and fund development by virtue of its Bill 185 and revisions to the provincial policy statement.
Rather than fretting about how Niagara-on-the-Lake can keep up with paying for roads, bridges and culverts without quadrupling property taxes, we and the rest of the citizens of Ontario should be holding the government of Doug Ford to account.
How many roads and bridges could be funded through vehicle licence fees? Stop buying votes with phony giveaways that we will all have to pay for in the end.
On a further note, the other controversial discussion of the April 30 council meeting should not have been controversial in the least, “NOTL councillors vote to raise annual salary to $20,000“).
Our municipal councillors are underpaid and deserve much more than the increase they voted for themselves.
Anyone who follows the council meetings and various committees of council can attest to the hours and commitment of our elected municipal representatives.
By the way, any citizen who wants to can still submit comments for a few more days to the Environmental Registry of Ontario on Bill 185 and the provincial policy statement, at ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-8369 and ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-8462Â respectively.
Bob Bader
NOTL
