Niagara Region’s Council Should Not Pile The Cost Of More Development Charges On the Backs of Already Struggling Ratepayers
A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted November 20th, 2025 on Niagara At Large
Tell our elected members of Niagara Regional Council to make developers pay their fair share of the costs of living and doing business in our region. Don’t let big-time, for profit developers run away with any more of our hard-earned money.
Tonight – at this Thursday, November 20th meeting of Niagara Regional Council – we who live, work and pay property taxes in Niagara will find out who on our Regional Council is representing us, and who is representing the private interests of the big-time, for profit members of the development industry.
This Thursday evening a motion is coming forward from Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa asking our regional government to cover the development charges for an outfit called Two Sisters Resorts Corp. to help cover the costs of building an underground parking lot for a hotel it wants to build at the former Parliament Oak School in the town.
The development charges in question add up to somewhere between $900,000 and $1 million, amount to close to $1 million and the bottom line is this – if the developer doesn’t pay them, the rest of us do.
That’s right. At a time when many homeowners and small businesses across Niagara are already struggling to pay property tax hikes from the regional government that have spiked well above the rate of inflation over the past three years – and at a time when we are facing a property tax hike as high as 10 per cent again this year – another developer wants us to pay for their development fees too.
This business of making everyday people across this Niagara region who are already paying more than their fair share of municipal taxes, subsidize the costs of developers too has got to stop.
It has got to stop now and it is our elected representatives at the local municipal and regional level who can stand up for us and stop it.
In this case, why should property tax payers in Welland or West Lincoln or Fort Erie or St. Catharines or any other municipality in Niagara get slapped with costs that should be paid by a developer building something in Niagara-on-the-Lake?
The Niagara Regional Council meeting where that question will be decided one way or another is this Thursday night, starting at 6:30 p.m. (If you can’t attend the meeting in person, here is a link you can click on to review a copy of the agenda and for watching it live at home – https://www.niagararegion.ca/government/council/calendar/default.aspx )
In the meantime, you can – AND SHOULD – contact your member of Regional Council and urge them to say no to the rest of us paying even nickel or dime of the development charges for this Two Sisters Resorts Corp. hotel plan.
Here is the list of Regional Councillors and their contact information that you can access by clicking on the following link and scrolling down – https://www.niagararegion.ca/government/council/profiles/default.aspx
How many of our elected representatives who sit in this Regional Council chambers will vote for our interests and how many will vote for the interests of developers?
Let your members of Niagara Regional Council know that you want them to represent your interests and those of your family, friends and neighbours who are doing our best to get by out here during difficult times.
You might also want to remind them that if they choose to vote in favour of making us cover the development costs of big developers, a municipal election is now just one year away and we will have the last word on the fate of their political future then.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
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