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Unnatural creatures
Had Frankenstein created the County’s waterworks system, it would have been less freakishly assembled. Six different water systems, from six different sources. Two wastewater plants. Few of the bits are interchangeable. Knowledge of one system informs you not-at-all about another. Operators require technical training and expertise in each of these wee and arcane plants and distribution systems. Frankenstein had the advantage of working with just a couple of lifeless organisms.
The story of how we got here is full of intrigue, deception and lies peppered with the truly absurd; much of it has been documented in sad detail in these pages over the past 17 years. It is studded with dubious achievements, including one of the most expensive water systems in Canada. (When last this column was provided waterworks data, the cost to operate Peat’s Point water system for nineteen homes was running at $3,405 per household per year; subsidized mostly by waterworks customers in Wellington and Picton.)
It features breathtaking betrayal and broken agreements in Consecon. Unconscionably bad deals with a so-called neighbour for Rossmore water. And it stars the mind-bending marvel of a sewage plant placed high up on a hillside, overlooking the town it serves below. (I can still see the stunned look on the then-council members’ faces when they learned the eye-watering electricity cost of pumping Pictonians’ poo up and down the hill.)
Ever since the water and electricity utility serving Picton, Bloomfield and Wellington was broken up and sold at the end of the last century (electricity to Hydro One, waterworks absorbed into the newly amalgamated municipality), governing this irretrievably isolated and incompatible collection of assets and operations has been a certifiable and unmitigated disaster.
To be clear, operationally, it has had more success with few serious issues. This has been achieved, however, by steadily ratcheting up the cost of the system, and ultimately your water bill.
A string of ad hoc committees has spent many months examining the waterworks utility. Most barely scratched the surface of this opaque collection of pipes and pumps. Yet, each committee met just long enough to conclude that water rates needed to be jacked up further. (Almost as if it were their primary purpose).
In between emergency reviews, it is council’s job to oversee the waterworks utility. But fewer than half of council members are consumers of the utility. This is nuts. Most of the overseers guiding this utility have nothing at stake in the decisions they make. Sort of like random strangers maintaining your home. Or, perhaps an orange reality TV celebrity running a powerful nation.
The 4,000 consumers of water and sewer services in Prince Edward County generate 100 per cent of the revenue of this utility. They pay all of its debt. They are entirely responsible for its repairs and upgrades. They are, by all practical measures, the owners of this utility. Yet, they have no voice. Instead, folks, most of whom have no stake in the works, make all the decisions on their behalf. Does this make sense to you?
What, you ask, are some of these decisions? Here are a couple of recent head-scratchers.
Lacking any credible evidence, trend or crystal ball that suggests the village of Wellington might expand by five times in our lifetime (from about 1,700 souls for the past 50 years soaring to 8,500 people in the foreseeable future), council last year paid a consultant a considerable amount of money (from utility funds) to draw up the waterworks expansion necessary to serve this imaginary population explosion.
They found that for a mere $100 million, we could buy a massive shiny new utility built for these 8,500 folks. Yet rather than modify their ambitions (or ground them in some plausible reality), council, along with Shire Hall, is doubling down.
Last week they heard a report from another consultant (also compensated with waterworks utility funds). This one was tasked with divvying up the $100 million price tag among the imaginary new homeowners in this fantastical scenario. (Bear in mind that in 2013, the same consultancy pegged water rates based on the assumption that 32,000 people would be living in the County by now. Meanwhile, the County’s population has declined since then. Which goes some way in explaining why utility revenue consistently falls short of expenses. But that is another scary story.)
The upshot is this: if council follows all this advice, development charges—already well north of those charged in competing markets in Belleville, Quinte West, Napanee and Brighton—will nearly double from approximately $18,000 for a single-detached home to almost $30,000. Non-residential development charges will catapult from $5.35 per square foot to $35.95 per square foot.
Perhaps some folks will pay this rate. Most, however, will choose to live or build their business elsewhere. And if this is the goal, then it may be effective, but is tragically short-sighted.
If so, let us stop talking about housing affordability. Let us end the charade of pretending to care about where folks on the margins will live in the County. Such fees incentivize big, beautiful homes and estates. And discourages modest homebuilding.
Demand will remain strong, while supply will be further stunted, driving existing home prices even higher. We are already well on our way to becoming the exclusive address for the wealthy. This merely dispels the illusion that council had any other plans.
For who is going to build a home in Wellington for a few hundred thousand and pay $30,000 in development charges plus building fees plus subdivision fees etc., etc. Particularly when they can build the same home across the bridge and pay a fraction of County fees. The answer is precisely no one.
It also means that waterworks consumers are stuck in a negative vortex—sucking us deeper into a deep, dark hole. Our rates are accelerating. There are no incentives for the operators or governors of the system to slow down rate increases. Few new customers are coming onto the system. More will be dissuaded by exorbitant charges. So we are hostages in a system that is spinning out of control, over which we have no leverage.
Our waterworks system is being planned and managed by folks whose governing interest is in making sure it is: A) compliant with provincial regulators; and B) that its losses don’t leak out onto the general taxpayer. That is it.
Frankenstein died wishing he could destroy the monster he let loose upon the countryside. Shire Hall still can’t see the destructive nature of the beast it created.
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