Comment
Wait and see
What’s the rush? Shire Hall seems intent on plunging waterworks customers into a deep pool of debt. Why? Where’s the urgency? $100 million in spending in Wellington alone. Perhaps another $100 million to bring Wellington water to Picton. Maybe farther? What is driving this breathtaking and unrelenting ambition?
The only bit that is clear is this: if its plans don’t turn out precisely as Shire Hall calculates, your water bills—currently among the highest in Ontario—will skyrocket as we absorb all this debt. A burden no one asked for. A burden no one needed. A burden that will further widen the divide between those who can afford to live in Prince Edward County and those who can’t. Yet, it’s a burden that you will pay. Because there is no one else.
One of the more precarious limbs upon which Shire Hall’s ambitions rest is a sustained surge in new homebuilding—tracts of homes and strip malls stretching ever further to the horizon. Shire Hall has recently revised its population growth projections upward, with Wellington now projected to become a mid-sized town of 14,500 people—and Picton a small city of 32,500 souls. Is this what anyone wants? Has anyone asked you?
Dreaming is easy. Funding is hard. Executing is really hard. Particularly when market dynamics are working against you.
Reports from Toronto last week point to a sharp drop in the construction of new homes (Globe and Mail, Toronto-area home building shifts into low gear as developers pause or cancel projects, Aug. 23, 2023). Rising home prices combined with higher interest rates are weakening demand across the region. July saw the lowest new home sales in the GTA in 10 years for that month. The malaise extends across the country. In an Aug. 9 report, The Canadian Home Builders’ Association found that 22 per cent of builders were cancelling plans, while 67 per cent said they were building fewer units.
What does this tell us in Wellington? Perhaps not much. Market snapshots are unreliable indicators. Interest rates may drop further. Incomes could rise, and builder sentiments may be positive in another quarter or two. But for now, builders are finishing projects, not starting them.
That means that a greenfield project—literally one still producing crops—in a rural market, two hours from the GTA and 30 minutes from the 401 will likely stay green for a while longer.
So why the rush? The entire foundation feels wobbly, especially as there remain so many unanswered questions.
Who will fill one million square feet of industrial, commercial and institutional space in the new town of Wellington? And when? It’s a critical question because Shire Hall figures that a stampede of strip mall developers is coming with $30 million in fees and charges to fund its plans. If these developers don’t show up— or balk at paying development charges ten times the going rate—waterworks customers will assume that debt. It is that simple. It can’t be spun any other way.
Neither does Shire Hall have a backup plan that should new homebuilding fail to materialize in Wellington. Or if it trickles in over 50 or 75 years. No, Shire Hall is betting that everything it dreams goes perfectly to plan. And it is betting your water bill on it.
A couple of words about the public meetings on Thursday (Aug. 31) and Sept. 7. Shire Hall is expecting you to be rude and insulting. I hope they are proved wrong. These are serious issues. They have long-term implications for the affordability in this community— particularly for those on a fixed income. It is, for some, an existential threat to their ability to continue to live here. It is a wound made worse by the fact that Shire Hall was pushed into explaining itself to you at this meeting on Thursday.
But consider setting your frustrations aside in this meeting. Consider those councillors, Shire Hall leadership, and staff are also your neighbours in a pretty wonderful place. Remember that the goal of these meetings is to encourage Council to press pause—to reconsider and reevaluate the notions that underpin these ambitions. It is not an exercise to demonstrate that any of us has empirical and unassailable insight, but to test the assumptions upon which these ambitions are constructed. Ultimately, it is about stakeholders earning a seat at the planning table of this utility. Belligerence, name-calling or shouting will be too easy to dismiss. Too easy to marginalize.
The world looks different after Covid. The smartest economists on the globe met last week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming—mostly to admit to each other that none of them has a good idea where the global economy is going next. The dominant theme emerging from that meeting was to wait and see where the data takes them.
It seems like good advice for us all.
I have no idea where the County plucked the number of 14,500 residents for Wellington at build out. Every projection that I have seen from the County and its ‘experts’ has been nowhere near that number. That projection is also wildly different than the projection made by the Ontario Ministry of Finance.
There have also been some misleading justifications presented by the County, such as the issue of development charges. An ad, prepared by the County and as I understand printed in this newspaper, indicated that the County was obligated to build infrastructure and unless things were done in the manner that they proposed, they could not collect development charges, ‘after the fact’ and current water users would have to foot the bill. In fact the Development Charge bylaw requires those charges to be paid upon the issuance of a building permit. No payment, no permit.
There is no doubt in my mind that the County is determined to proceed upon the course of action that it has embarked upon. It seems the tender has been issued for the Millennium Trail water and sewer work.
Last I heard, there was reserve capacity for roughly 350 homes in the current treatment plants. Given this information, the construction of the Trail project should then allow some of this ‘new construction’. Obviously the water and sewer infrastructure within a new subdivision is built at the cost of the developer. That will be the test. We will see if construction starts. If not, then it looks like about $20 million dollars will have to be covered by the existing users.
In a recent email to what appears to be the one remaining large developer, I was advised that sales of their properties were currently on hold and they would advise me when that status changes. Maybe they are waiting to see if those water lines are built. Maybe they are waiting for lower interest rates, lower material costs and an uptick in house prices. All of that is within the purview of the developer and the County will have no better insight on that then you and I.
I believe that Council really believes that it is acting in the best interest of the people they represent. Time will tell if their beliefs were founded on fact or fancy.