McQueen highlights business, housing gains as council term winds down

More than 600 new housing unit builds, 200 net new businesses and 56 meetings with provincial ministers are among the highlights of this term of council, staff said.

With the four-year term wrapping up later this year and residents poised to go to the polls to elect a new mayor and council, CAO Chris McQueen offered a review of the term at Monday night’s council meeting.

While the review covered a wide variety of activities based largely on the six strategic pillars council implemented at the outset of the term, the CAO pointed out a few specifics.

“We often forget about things that happened earlier in the term that were significant accomplishments,” he said.

This term of council started as Fort Erie and the world was coming out of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The town’s ability to attract 200 net new businesses at a time of economic uncertainty was something not all municipalities could achieve, McQueen said.

Residential growth has also been strong, if uneven. In the last three years there have been a total of 607 new build units created in Fort Erie. Though that doesn’t give the full picture of recent growth.

“Although we‘ve seen slower years and much more aggressive years, we’ve seen over the last five years nearly 1,200 new units added in the town of Fort Erie,” McQueen said.

On the advocacy front, McQueen said town officials have gotten face-to-face time with their provincial and federal counterparts as much as possible, citing 56 meetings with provincial ministers, and several presentations on topics of local importance, namely on health care.

“This is fairly significant in terms of the priority council put forward to have government relations and advocacy front and centre on some major issues that are facing the town of Fort Erie, so this has been, I think, a fairly significant effort on the part of council to get out before provincial and federal governments,” McQueen said.

Other highlights the CAO pointed out included: 17 projects to update parks and rec facilities in town, more than $9 million in grants received, and new official plan that was approved, new plans to guide the museum and the town’s response to climate change, and an increase in online engagement.

The municipal election is October 26.

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