PelhamToday received the following letter from reader Andrew Watts in response to the story Regional Chair shares thoughts with provincial committee on housing crisis.
The presentation appeared to me not to be about any governance reform in Niagara Region but rather a plea for our politicians and their staff to be given even more federal and provincial funding (tax dollars), to employ even more staff (more tax dollars), and to continue to ‘subsidize’ developers (even more tax dollars), whilst having a ‘senior planner’ to assist in fast tracking any proposed development that may meet any opposition at all, from negatively impacted local residents.
He appears to blindly support the Ontario Land Tribunal, which was formed when the infamous OMB was dissolved when seen as too pro-development by approving over 95 percent of every single OMB hearing in favour of the developer.
Is the fact that the Ontario Land Tribunal ‘only’ supports the developers in 93 percent of their tribunals anything that might make Niagara’s taxpayers and property owners feel good about it?
Quite frankly the whole theme from many Niagara politicians was the insistence that they were already meeting and bettering all of the province’s targets and were happy to do so.
When not even one of them has told their constituents and taxpayers just who is going to buy all these ‘essential’ 500,000 new homes, and will commit, ahead of time, to have adequate incomes to buy them?
Or will we find, all too soon, that as with most political promises, they are empty, and the taxpayer, yet again, will be left with a new ‘development welfare tax’?
Andrew Watts
Wainfleet
