Running

There is that moment when Wile E. Coyote pursues the Roadrunner through a cloud of dust, emerging on the other side to find himself beyond the cliff’s edge. Suspended momentarily in mid-air, Mr. Coyote looks forlornly to the camera and then holds up a sign that reads: HELP!

Only when Mr. Coyote recognizes his fate does he begin his long descent to the canyon floor below—disappearing to become a speck. Cut to a coyoteshaped hole in the ground.

Until that moment, the viewer is on the side of the bird. But then: Beep! Beep! Our sympathies shift completely. It is all so sad. Mr. Coyote had worked so hard. Applying industry, creativity, and innovation in the pursuit. Yet, none of it had worked. It would never work.

The futility of it all is exasperating. Maddening. Running but never catching up. Knowing W.E.C. will never succeed—yet will continue to chase the Roadrunner relentlessly. Scheming. Planning. More a nightmare than a Saturday morning cartoon. And then back at it again next week.

I relate to the coyote most weeks. I expect County council does, too.

Each week Council chases Shire Hall’s seemingly unbounded ambition. It will never catch up. But the chase is all it has left. All it knows.

Council is running so fast, so earnestly, so blindly toward the cliff’s edge that it doesn’t see the approaching doom. It can no longer recognize the terrible risks ahead.

Former schools to affordable homes. New long-term care home development. Waterworks expansion. Roads to upgrade. Roads to downgrade. The ever-escalating bid price to persuade doctors to work here. The list only begins here.

Each file is gargantuan on its own. Each is bigger than anything ever undertaken in this small rural community. The sheer audacity of the ambition is breathtaking. Dazzling. Mesmerizing.

Council is blowing through red lights and caution flags so quickly that it can no longer avoid the devasting pain coming when it emerges from the cloud and finds nothing but a deep, dark canyon far below.

Last week, the canyon floor looked like urban roads. (See story Crumbling on the Times website.) Unsurprisingly, these assets are in poorer condition than Council knew. A ranging, unrelenting headache amplified by the presence of a network of waterworks pipes under each urban roadway. Each decaying. Becoming leakier. More fragile.

It turns out that larding a whopping and permanent $25 million hike to the tax levy each year—as Council approved last year, to be phased in over five years so that residents won’t notice, except those who do—won’t be enough. Council learned last week that this is just the beginning. Urban roads will need much more investment. How much more? We don’t know. The answer will have to wait until budget time. But, please, understand it’s bad. Really, really bad.

That Prince Edward County has big infrastructure problems is not in question. The County has 1,047 kilometres of roads, 110 km of water mains and 49 km of sewer pipes. All of it is decaying. All of it needs investment. These facts are indisputable. Nor are they new. What to do about it is the perennial question.

If this weren’t a zany cartoon, we might pause collectively at this juncture—or ten years ago—to talk about what we are doing next. What can we do? How much will it cost? And how much if we don’t act? And who should pay? Can 12,000 homes pay for this shopping spree? You know, the big talk.

But talking isn’t really Shire Hall’s thing. It’s about action. Tick-the-box-consultation and away we go.

Previous Shire Hall leadership teams muddled through with the limited resources afforded them from a scattered population of just 25,000. They were averse to talking about the magnitude of the problem, for there were no easy remedies nor any pots of gold at hand to dump into the hole (not that some council members didn’t try).

The current administration has a different take. It’s a much bolder and braver one. Leadership decided early on they were going to fix this place. All of it. They saw the problem clearly, understood it would not fix itself and that the cost would be greater in the future. Rather than shrink from the daunting task, this administration set to work. Everything. Everywhere. All at once. It would do so, even if it had to drag Council along with it.

With a clenched jaw and a steely sense of purpose, Shire Hall has decided to do what should have been done years ago. It is doing so with a fair dose of disdain for past leadership and those who would disagree. Leadership is buoyed, however, by the self-assurance of a high-stakes gambler willing to lose everything for the big score.

Yet it is all so impossible. So futile. There are just too few taxpayers and too few dollars to fill all these holes. Too much geography. Too few people. Shire Hall can’t tax enough, can’t borrow enough to do what it dreams of doing. And there are no signs the province or federal government are coming to help. Yet Shire Hall rockets this community further from away from the cliff’s edge.

Out of breath, confused and dejected, Council is now resorting to holding up a sign that reads: RESPECT!

rick@wellingtontimes.ca