Dear editor:

I commend Stuart McCormack and his team at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Residents Association for setting things in motion to bring newly elected faces to town council at the next election. Challenges and questions abound for consideration. These are some.

One challenge that the Niagara-on-the-Lake Residents Association has is the manner in which NOTL is geographically structured and represented.

Old Town, Virgil, Glendale, Queenston, Chautauqua and St. Davids have population bases that are not united in their interests but rather focused on their specific needs rather than the collective whole.

This allows the existing town council to essentially divide and conquer the electoral base by not having the entire electoral base engaged in important issues that may only apply to one residential area. And, neither of these geographical population bases has specific representatives upon which each district can rely to argue or negotiate their specific causes within town council.

A NOTL Residents Association may resolve this through the election of like-minded Councillors, but perhaps it would also be appropriate to have a specific Councillor elected by the constituents in each geographical area to represent each residential area’s interests. A plebiscite?

The town’s infrastructure needs to be addressed. Town council and staff have not focused on (or ignored) the lack of existing infrastructure capacity (such as sewage capacity and water hydrology), particularly when sewage capacity and flooding have been demonstrably shown to be in need of upgrades. While infrastructure shortcomings have been ignored, real estate development has continued unabated.

For example, the St. Davids stormwater and roadway master servicing plan and class environmental assessment (sewer capacity) was last completed in January 2003. Does anyone think that, after 22 years, a new master plan is required? And, the sanitary sewer and water master plan for St. Davids cannot be found by town staff — where is it?

We know that the sewage being pumped from St. Davids to the Niagara Falls is exceeding the capacity of that treatment plant, and sewage is being periodically dumped into the Niagara River. Niagara Region is planning to build a new South Niagara Wastewater Treatment Plant at a cost of approximately $400 million to rectify this. But this just didn’t appear overnight.

NOTL council and staff should not have been approving developments in the St. Davids urban boundary during the last five years or longer, knowing that the infrastructure, as it is, doesn’t support further residential/commercial expansion.

The treasurer/CAO (or town council/staff) should have adequately budgeted for infrastructure capacity (such as drainage) to allow for future real estate development.

Town council claims that it relies on staff professionals for their expert opinions and makes decisions based on these experts. However, the town does not have anyone with a P. Eng., P.L. (Eng.) on staff to evaluate/vet engineering reports paid for by developers — engineering reports probably designed to promote the developer’s project rather than pointing out any shortcomings in that development and the town’s infrastructure.

Supposedly, there have been engineering reports paid by a developer couched in exculpatory language designed to exclude them from any liability issues that may arise as a result of errors or omissions their reports might contain.

In a small community such as Niagara, where everyone knows everyone, businesses that rely on work directed to them from both governmental bodies and developers within the region are not going to want to upset their sources of income.

As a result, you have to wonder whether engineering consultants (or others) contracted by the town are likely to (out of self-interest, a.k.a. future potential revenue streams) contradict other known neighbouring business entities that are advocating a particular development.

It’s also unknown how many external consulting contracts the town has contracted over the years, and whether a cost-benefit analysis has been done to see if it’s financially worthwhile to have a qualified engineer on staff.

The town has people employed in the environmental stewardship department, they have a climate change co-ordinator and they have customer experience representatives. From my perspective, wouldn’t it be just as important, if not more important, to have a qualified engineer on staff as well?

The urban design committee should be empowered. Presently, they have no power or authority, but council/staff can say residential representatives were consulted — good optics. Perhaps it’s time to empower them?

Finally, town councillors need to be appropriately remunerated commensurate with the time and effort they put in because it’s really a full-time job.

Gienek Ksiazkiewicz
St. Davids