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The symptoms are troubling. Eight years have come and gone since Shire Hall discovered it had to take action with the convenience store, and the creek that runs underneath it, on the main corner in Wellington. It has been nine years since the Dukedome went dark. Yet it sits there abandoned, with no clear plan for the future of this property. Two years getting the seawall repaired in Wellington Park. A year to resurface the tennis court, only to have it bubble up before the first serve was delivered.
Against these mounting troubles arrives the report on the project to rebuild washrooms in Ameliasburgh Park. It reads like a cry for help. The four-toilet, concrete block building was approved in the spring of 2018. The tender was awarded in May. It was supposed to be completed by July 24. Last year. It likely won’t be finished by this Canada Day. A year and four change orders later, it is a searing flare burning in the sky that something is fundamentally broken inside Shire Hall.
The report makes it clear there is plenty of blame to go around. Misunderstandings. Miscommunication. Poor oversight. You name it, it went wrong. But how wrong could it go? It was the simplest of projects— a 440 square foot, concrete building. Some basic plumbing.
But the warning signs came early. No design firm responded when the first request for quotation for the design of this wee project was issued early last year. None was interested. The municipality begged. They asked 17 different firms if they would be interested in designing these washrooms. Only one expressed interest.
So it was that by June they had a plan and were ready to put the project up for tender. Only three contractors submitted bids. The low bid was an astonishing $175,054—or $397 per square foot. A royal sum for a humble park toilet.
The low bidder was familiar to the municipality. Standard Paving was already working on the seawall in Wellington.
The account of another works project gone awry unsettled council members when it was presented at the Committee of the Whole last week. Some were embarrassed. Others disappointed. One suggested the municipality make the contractor work weekends and nights. How that might be accomplished in the midst of a live municipally let contract wasn’t spelled out by the councillor.
Only one seemed interested in understanding the structural problem—if, indeed, the challenges were structural in nature.
Peter Moyer, Director of Development Services gamely answered the committee’s questions. He admitted that the municipality struggled with small projects. Their list of usual suppliers and contractors are geared toward major projects, roads, bridges, bigger buildings. He added that the County’s procurement policy encumbered the contracting of small projects and discouraged smaller, more suitable contractors or builders from raising their hand or submitting a bid.
He went further. Moyer pointed to a gap in the County’s planning team for someone dedicated to development projects. Someone who could focus on the minutiae of applications for a mounting pile of new building, site plans and subdivision agreements accumulating at the steps of Shire Hall.
He pointed to the empty position of development engineer. The person responsible to ensure that new projects work and fit with existing infrastructure. Finally, he pointed to the need for another project manager position.
Council sailed past this key moment. Indeed, the councillor whose advice was essentially to “get’r done”, cut off the director in order to make this facile point.
The fix won’t be found in empty and useless urging. It won’t be solved by amplifying the pressure on a delinquent contractor—at least not this close to the finish line.
Structural problems require structural solutions.
The first thing to be done is to fill the vacancies identified by Moyer. Equip him and his team with the people and resources to do their job effectively.
Anyone who is even half-paying attention to events in our midst will understand there is tremendous investment and development pressure occurring in Prince Edward County. Some of it will be good. Some won’t. Some will happen. Some won’t. But ignoring it isn’t an adult coping strategy. Closing our eyes, and stuffing our fingers into our ears while reciting la-la-la-la is irresponsible.
The County must build its development capacity to properly assess, evaluate, manage and ensure compliance by the folks seeking to invest in this community. Council has been reluctant to add to staff for fear of a public backlash. Our representatives must learn the difference between making an investment that may deliver a return, and an expense that it must create in order to meet its moral, legal or governmental obligations. Development skills fall clearly within the latter category.
More to the point, there are serious costs and consequences to running at over-capacity for long periods of time. Things break. Projects go off the rails. Worse, when you dedicate precious resources to the failing projects, the risk rises that something else will blow up. It starts feeding on itself until morale is in the toilet and the incentive to do a good job dissipates like the park soil that was meant to be protected by the newly repaired seawall.
So, this to council and Mayor Steve Ferguson. It’s time to step up and make the investments needed to match the volume of work lading up the planning and development folks.
Or not. But in that event, you must decide which projects you won’t do. Which roads and bridges won’t get fixed. Which site plans will be shelved. Stock up on plywood, instead, to cover the windows of decaying properties and facilities. Clearly the current structure isn’t working.
At some point, and we are here, it is both useless and counterproductive to keep flogging the horse pulling your wagon. It is time for reinforcements.
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