Comment
Who decides?
Andreas Bolik has no business making decisions about your waterworks. No more than you should be telling him how to run his water and septic systems. Councillor Bolik—and indeed most of his Council colleagues—has no stake in the County’s waterworks. None. It matters not at all to them if water rates rise, fall or the system balloons out of all proportion. Most are spectators. Unaffected. Uninterested.
Yet, Bolik and most of his colleagues dismissed the governance debacle staring them in the face. They believe they know better than you do about how your waterworks should be governed.
No sooner had the notion of a user-based governance body to guide the user-funded waterworks been floated, than it was swatted down. It would add costs, not lower them, said the naysayers, either missing the point or willfully ignorant to the conflict before them. In any event, there is no evidence a user-based governance model would cost more. It is the brand of evidence-free consideration Council has traditionally brought to the governance of this waterworks utility.
Bolik observed that the County doesn’t consist of six water systems; instead, it consists of thousands of wells, and septic beds, said the Ameliasburgh representative. This distorted impression of the County’s waterworks plant is what passes for debate on this complex and unwieldy utility.
While it was unclear the point Bolik was striving to make, it served to highlight the very problem a userbased waterworks authority would solve. That is that waterworks users should have some direct say over the decisions that affect their system, their bills, their water. This business should not be a plaything for those without a stake in the outcome.
Yet this set of councillors—not all but most—have no qualms about doing just that. Last week they locked in rate hikes for the next five years. On your behalf. Bigly.
The cost of County water—already among the highest in Ontario—will, for a household using 200 cubic metres per year, rise to $2,259. 92 next year. It will climb every year—as it has done every year for a decade—rising to $2,682.04 by 2027—an 18 per cent increase in this span. This is now locked in, enacted by folks, a majority of whom have nothing at stake in the decision. They will not feel the impact of their choices. They have decided how much you shall pay. They have done this for you.
It may not mean much if you have already absorbed a three-fold increase in your water bill in the past two decades. But many families are asking when it will end. And where? On this point, there is little light. Or guidance. Shire Hall is determined to spend $100 million in Wellington. A larger “regional waterworks plan” referred to only in fuzzy outlines will surely present a similar price tag. These are monumental and unprecedented investments in this user-funded utility. They will incur debt only waterworks users will repay.
One might think the scale and scope of these decisions might arouse some curiosity among Council. About what it means and where we will end up. You would be mistaken.
The Council committee gave the utility 30 minutes of its time last week. The discussion centred, almost exclusively, on how to redistribute the rising costs— from the less-well-off to richer customers. Or theorizing about how to transfer waterworks costs to the general taxpayer.
Because there is such little interest in the topic, this council is easily distracted with shiny baubles. How about higher rates in the summer—to make tourists pay? Hell yeah, we hate tourism. Would Council consider such a move against any other sector of the economy? Hell no. Have they considered the impact beyond their distaste for visitors? Hell no.
Power is seductive—even small bits of power. Once attained, some humans don’t let it go easily.
What else explains Councillor Bolik’s position. He has his own water and septic system. I expect the good councillor would resent you telling him how to manage, finance and replace it. He would rightly claim it is none your business.
At a minimum, Bolik, and every other councillor who is not a customer of the County waterworks, needs to declare this fact before ever talking about this system again. Leave that to council members with a direct stake in the utility—folks who know firsthand how these decisions impact households; how it affects the lives who depend on this service.
Residents expect their representatives’ interests to be aligned with their own. It is a standard half of Council fails to meet every time waterworks is on the table.
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