End times
That should be the end of it. The $300 million plan to take water out of Lake Ontario in Wellington and deliver it to Picton was always a pipe dream. Unprecedented in scale, cost and risk, the plan was never going to work. That much is clear now. Worse, it risked a massive financial failure […]
Ghosts and elephants
Some folks don’t worry about Shire Hall spending $300 million it doesn’t have. They aren’t bothered by the fact that the County has never seen a project of this size and complexity. They aren’t troubled by Shire Hall’s lack of experience in planning or building anything on this scale. They don’t worry about debt. They […]
July 24
Would you run your household this way? Your farm? Your business? Imagine a married couple with no kids. They’ve been married for more than a few years, and they want children. They want them badly. But nothing yet. So they keep trying. Then a sales rep comes along and explains that if they buy this […]
Another summer
A few weeks ago, The Times presented Jordan Yarrow’s story. He owns a building lot in Wellington but can’t build a house on it. He would like to build a house, but Shire Hall won’t let him. It has committed the remaining waterworks capacity in the village’s waterworks to a single developer who owns the […]
Wet noodles
As they flail about looking for an argument, the cheerleaders for $300 million of waterworks expansion have landed on the accusation that those worried about drowning under unbearable spending are “antigrowth” and “NIMBY’s” (not-in-my- back-yard). It is nonsense. And easily demonstrated as such. (Lacking real arguments—or history or context— some have resorted to throwing spaghetti […]
The job
It’s not about Wellington. Never was. It is about reckless spending, overly ambitious and poorly assembled plans, and the twitchy arrogance of one man who believes he can and will commit hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to his dream— because he is mayor. Because he can. His former campaign manager and other cheerleaders around […]
Modern times
Perhaps the place is unmanageable. The geography is big. The place populated by too few people. Twenty-five souls per kilometre of road. Yet we receive/demand/ expect the services of suburbia†. In the wake of the departure of the County’s fifth manager in 15 years, maybe we should ask ourselves why it is so. We may […]
Absolute power
Beware of government in a hurry. When provincial politicos become impatient with the pace of their accomplishments, it is the small, the fragile and the outof- sight who tend to get whacked. When Queen’s Park is in a rush, it doesn’t often pause to consider the impact on rural communities like Prince Edward County. Think […]
Stuck
Jordan Yarrow wants to build a house in Wellington. Last week, the young man managed to sever a lot from his property on Belleville Road. Sadly, it could be decades before he is allowed to build. He might be an old man before he can start digging a hole for his new home in Wellington. […]
Make believe
The arithmetic doesn’t add up. The scale of the project is monstrous. No one at Shire has undertaken anything like this before. And, nearly all the risk they are taking will fall to residents (municipal water customers) who don’t need it, won’t use it and didn’t ask for it. But surely the most frightening bit […]