One thing

There is only one issue. It literally defines everything else. If we fail to fix it, in this next term of council, every other issue we consider vital to our community’s health will be diminished. All the things we aspire for our County may be put out of reach. Time is running out.

First, some basic questions: Does a new hospital matter to you? How about healthcare services more generally? Long-term care beds? Your water bill? Your road? Sidewalks? Property taxes? How about affordability? Are you concerned about the prospect that you and your neighbours are being priced out of Prince Edward County? What about short-term rentals? Has your neighbourhood been hollowed out in exchange for bachelorette lucre?

We tend to see these as discrete issues. Unrelated to each other. I suggest to you, with some urgency, that these things are all connected. And that unless we address the root of the issue, promptly, each of these issues will be made worse. Perhaps intractably so. Fixing it requires council leadership and focus. It will require all the energies and creativity of every member of the new council to turn this around.

Put simply, our housing market is broken. Demand to live here greatly outstrips our supply of resale and new homes. New homebuilding is not happening nearly fast enough to close the gap. This isn’t abstract economic theory. These are cruel and unrelenting forces changing our community before our eyes—choosing who can live here and who can’t.

Home prices continue to skyrocket. County homes that sold two years ago for couple of hundred thousand dollars are now marketed for double this amount—and they don’t linger long before they are snapped up. Without significant new supply to satisfy the demand, prices will continue to rise.

For some, high prices push them to offset the staggering cost with vacation rental income. Some are certainly speculators. Others are simply trying to feed their kids in a place that has rapidly become unaffordable to them. Airbnb is a symptom—not the root cause. Fixing this alone—won’t alter the fundamental challenge for this next council.

Others, of course, simply move away. Defeated by invisible forces that are rendering life in Prince Edward County untenable.

Waterworks customers are being ravaged by rapidly escalating bills. Even if you conserve water, or you go away and don’t use any water at all, your bills are rising. And will continue to do so. This is because as system costs rise, we have too few customers to pay the bill. Put roads, libraries, fire service, policing all in this same deteriorating bucket.

Here is the big one. The one statistic you really need to pay attention to.

Our population is falling. I know, I know. It doesn’t feel that way on a Saturday morning in Wellington. Yet this is the most terrifying trend we face in Prince Edward County. The County’s population, according to Statistics Canada, peaked in 2006. That year they counted 25,496 residents. By the next census in 2011, the population had dropped to 25,258. Just a one per cent decline, but the amount was irrelevant—the salient fact was the County’s population was headed in the wrong direction. Then in 2016 Statistics Canada reported that the County had shrunk again to 24,735. A deteriorating trend had been established.

Provincial healthcare bureaucrats signal with brutal clarity that they invest public dollars in growing communities—not shrinking ones. It is of no consequence to these folks that our aging population relies to a greater degree on these services. Their calculation is that we will move to the services when we need them. They think in terms of consolidation and centralization. The trouble is that they are likely right about that. Much of the loss of residents in communities like Wellington over the past decade has been to communities where care is closer and more comprehensive.

So what can we do? During the last term of council, a group of developers, council members, and Shire Hall staff met over many months. They produced 38 recommendations to council designed to speed up development, to make the County more competitive with neighbouring jurisdictions—each vying for development investment—and to kickstart new homebuilding in this community. That outgoing mayor said many of the right things. But nothing changed on the ground. There was talk, but little leadership from council.

And then new homebuilding rebounded in 2017. Council believed that talk had fixed the problem. But so far in 2018, new homebuilding has slumped again. We didn’t build nearly enough homes in 2017—and disappointingly we are on pace for significantly fewer in 2018.

The County has an inventory of building parcels representing about 700 units in various states of readiness. We have had that for the better part of a decade. But an array of structural and process roadblocks continue to stymie progress in building-out this stock.

The next County council must make new homebuilding its sole priority. It must work at it until we see more homes built in the County—working toward a better equilibrium between supply and demand.

Economic forces are shaping this community in ways we sense are not fair or desirable. It ought not be a place defined by the survival of the richest.

Ours is a rich, diverse and caring community. County council must demonstrate meaningful leadership. Talk is not nearly enough to alter our trajectory.

The next census is 2021. The next council has essentially two years to change the County’s demographic trend. Three census periods of declining population will spell death to our schools, to our hospital, to our roads and infrastructure. Another drop in the number of residents will effectively ensure the County becomes the exclusive enclave for the wealthy and the vacationers. Our notion of community will erode faster than our population—as we witness the places and institutions that bind us together go dark.

So when candidates come to your door this fall, ask them what they intend to do to get the County growing again, and to restore hope that it once again becomes a viable place to live for everyone who considers it home.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca