Comment
No escape
Shire Hall has spent at least $50 million, so far, to facilitate a residential housing developer in Wellington. Not its own money, mind you; instead, it has splashed around waterworks’ customer money.
It was a colossal mistake. Water customers, across Prince Edward County, must now ask their council members: What did we get for $50 million?
The money spent will not improve water quality for existing customers. Nor will it extend the life of the existing infrastructure. Nor will it give the system one more ounce of water or flushing capacity.
The water system in Wellington worked well before a new water tower was erected and before diggers pounded a two-kilometre-long trench across the village. Perfect? No. But with regular upkeep and maintenance, it would have continued to serve Wellington residents safe, clean water well into the future. As it was designed to do.
Expanding Wellington’s infrastructure was to benefit a single developer who owns farmland north of the village. The developer has owned this land for 20 years. It has, seemingly, little interest in building homes in Wellington—now, if ever.
Shire Hall senior leadership at the time said the developer would pay. They assured you that growth would pay for growth. They won awards for their financial engineering prowess.
But the folks who made these deals, who won the accolades, who set this “astonishing reckless” fiasco in motion, are all gone.
Meanwhile, the developer has paid the municipality just $16 million. Far short of the $50 million that the County has incurred so far. (Don’t feel too bad for the developer; however, their property is worth a lot more today, with shiny new waterworks running along the length of their land holdings.)
Compounding the error, the municipality also gave the developer a lock on the capacity of the water system in Wellington, meaning that only that developer is permitted to build a home in the village. And the developer, seemingly, has no intention of doing so. Perhaps not for another 20 years. Maybe never. (The capacity lock, too, has value for the developer—a currency that can be traded for cash.)
Regular readers know these facts by now. But there is something different about knowing the truth and fully absorbing its impact in the form of a crushing weight of debt—from which there will be no escape. Some of these bills are coming due. We will feel them in higher water bills in Carrying Place, Consecon, Rossmore, Ameliasburgh, Wellington, Bloomfield and Picton.
Imagine what else Prince Edward County might have done with $50 million. Consider what you might have done if you didn’t owe this money to Shire Hall. If you weren’t paying down this debt incurred in your name.
I turn now to a story from a village outside Kitchener. Last week, 25 Breslau homeowners received letters from their municipality, Woolwich Township, ordering them to pay nearly $14,000 for sewer work under their street completed more than a decade ago.
Not many of the details are comparable to our situation in Prince Edward County, except that Woolwich Township now admits it did a poor job of communicating with its residents. The underlying matter was stuck in litigation for a decade. The director of infrastructure services acknowledges that the township should have done a better job of anticipating the impact of the overhanging cost after a decade of silence.
“It was a miss. There’s no excuse for it,” admitted Jared Puppe to the CBC.
But it changes nothing. The 25 families will pay this bill. They have hired a lawyer. They have gained publicity. They will make their case to council. And it won’t change a thing.
Litigation costs and staff time will be added to the overall debt. Folks will either pay the bill in full by the end of this week, agree to payment terms, or the charge will be added to their property tax bill.
In every scenario, the 25 Breslau families will pay this bill. There is no escape.
The CBC scenario quotes one resident as “hoping for a miracle.”
County water customers are beyond salvation. A miracle won’t spare them the $50 million they’ve spent to facilitate one developer. This money is gone. They will get nothing for this expense. Yet they will pay for it through higher water bills.
It is the way of municipal government. There is only one source of funds—the property taxpayer. They will pay for every mistake, every misstep, every miscalculation.
It matters who we choose to govern our municipalities.
“The water system in Wellington worked well before a new water tower was erected…” Wrong. Wellington on the Lake has about 450 houses and about twice that in numbers of residents. Yet the water pressure to serve this subdivision was pathetically low. Pressure at the fire hydrants was the lowest in the village. There was a major fire in the community that destroyed one townhouse, most of a second and smoke damage to the third unit. The fire department had to set up its ‘pond’ in order to have sufficient water. So no, the system did not work well in Wellington especially when you consider that basically half of the village suffered with low pressure. With the tower in place, I have noticed an increase in pressure in my home. When all is in operation, WOTL should finally have proper service. Locking up the capacity for expansion in the hands of one developer may have been a mistake, but an improvement to bring service up for existing customers has been a long time coming. I suppose your statement that we “…will get nothing for this expense” is accurate if you assume that WOTL is not part of Wellington.
If the evidence of the value/benefit of spending $50 million is that “I have noticed an increase in pressure in my home,” then I guess I am happy that you are grateful for this trade off. I remain unconvinced.
You seemed to have missed the rest of my comment. I am not surprised as it does not fit your narratvie.