Cheropita thrilled with third place finish

In 2018, Wendy Cheropita earned 3,144 votes in her run for town council, placing her fifth among the 25 candidates. The 3,774 votes she captured in Monday’s election put her in third place for her second run behind only Erwin Wiens and Gary Burroughs.

“I am beyond honoured and I’m humbled that the residents put their confidence in me to this degree,” she told The Local Tuesday morning. “To think I am third behind residents like Erwin and Gary, I am just thrilled. It gives me great pride and confidence in the residents that they wanted good, authentic governance.”

Cheropita sees the overall makeup of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s next council as a good combination of newcomers, younger people, entrepreneurs and experienced councillors. “It’s a really good cross-section of experiences and backgrounds,” she said. “I think this is going to be a very dynamic four years.”

Cheropita added that there was a lot of negativity, bullying and misinformation aimed at her, Wiens and Burroughs in the recent past. She feels the mandate given to this next council is for better, responsible governance and responsible management of the town’s finances. At the doors, she said, she heard from residents that they wanted council to tackle the “big things.”

Top of the list is to get planning policies in place. “We’ve had an incredible number of legal disputes from various developers and individuals,” Cheropita said. “Many of them could have been fixed by changing policies first and approving them, and then having an opportunity to look at the community and figure out what we need to have built and where.”

She is concerned that the town doesn’t have enough residences for seniors. She’d like to see more rental apartments and condominiums that will accommodate NOTL’s aging seniors as they move out of their larger homes. At the same time, she acknowledged the need for more housing for those raising their families. “There’s an opportunity to think bigger,” she added, “and to maybe influence developers. If we have a vision we can talk to the developers about building the things the community needs. It’s a different, more collaborative approach. A more positive approach.”

With the pandemic hopefully in the rearview mirror, she is hoping to focus on getting things done that were pushed to the side since March, 2020. “We have to make sure we get the master transportation plan done properly,” she said. “We have to build a strong relationship with the region so the residents have a say in things. Let’s get the tourism strategy done so that we actually have a plan that will give us a balance of tourism and still have a wonderful place to live. And we need to look at the long-term financial stability of the town.”

Cheropita suggested that the new council needs to build a stronger relationship with the province in order to tap into some of the larger infrastructure funding dollars that other municipalities have been able to access. She called for an economic impact study of NOTL’s tourism on the province as a whole. “That could show us how much our tourism benefits the province,” she said. “I’m sure it’s somewhere in the range of $1 or $2 billion. Then we could use that to ask for support for investment in our aging infrastructure.”

And Cheropita is looking forward to working with the next lord mayor. “Gary will be a wonderful leader,” she said. “He’ll be great to work with because he’s a team player, he’s collaborative. He’s talked about leadership in the way of empowering people, making sure every councillor has a voice. All those things that make people at their very best.”