Comment
About governance
How did we get here? How did we get to a point where Shire Hall has already spent tens of millions of your dollars and is gearing up to spend $100 million more on works that few understand? Or want? The 6,000 County families who will fund this massive borrowing don’t know why it is occuring. Or why now? They want to know how we got here.
Both Mayor Steve Ferguson and CAO Marcia Wallace emphasized to the large gathering assembled in Wellington a week ago that waterworks in Prince Edward County is complex—six water systems, two wastewater treatment plants and miles of leaky pipes underground. Rossmore and Fenwood Garden water comes from Belleville. Consecon and Carrying Place water is from Quinte West. Peat’s Point’s 19 customers take their water from a municipal well. Ameliasburgh from Roblin Lake. Picton from the bay and Wellington from Lake Ontario. Few of the bits match, while the knowledge and training required to operate them is daunting.
So, yes, it is complicated. It costs more to operate than would a simpler collection of pumps and pipes. But neither the County waterworks nor the system’s complexity is unique. This page described last August an equally multifaceted waterworks system in Brant County—five water and four wastewater systems. Brant waterworks customers pay less than half the cost County ratepayers do.
When pressed on this point, Shire Hall will tell you it inherited a mess—that previous managers left us in this state—and that it will take a lot of work and money to make it right.
Leave aside that every manager figures the last guy in the role is to blame for the challenges they manage today. It is unfair and untrue. The product from the tap is safe and clean. And when the source in Picton was threatened by a barge spill in the bay a few years ago, waterworks operators, senior leadership and public officials responded quickly and effectively to minimize the impact on residents.
There have been missteps and challenges, but it is much too simplistic, verging on misleading, to say this utility was mismanaged; therefore, we need hundreds of millions of investment to fix past mistakes.
It is fair, however, to ask: Where was the oversight? Where were the governors? Why weren’t they asking questions? Why weren’t they demanding answers? Directing investment and resources? Where are they now? Why aren’t they standing beside ratepayers demanding answers?
We got here because—from this observer’s perch—too few council members were paying attention. We got here because of poor governance. Customers of the waterworks utility have always been a minority on County council— the ostensible governors of the waterworks system—since it was formed in 1998. Put another way, most of the folks tasked with governing this utility have no stake in it. They have their own water system to worry about.
It is not that they don’t care—it’s that they don’t care enough to make the tough decisions. To ask the difficult questions. To push back on ever-steeper rate hikes. To ask why? Or, why not something else?
Three ad hoc committees have been established since 2009 to examine the many and varied challenges in County waterworks. Each was hardworking, well-intentioned and effective. They moved ratepayers miles forward in our collective understanding of this complex set of assets. But each committee had a deadline. After months of education, consideration and reflection, each committee was disbanded. All the accumulated knowledge, expertise and insight was flushed away. Three times.
Now, Shire Hall leadership has proposed yet another committee—with yet another expiration date. To do it all again. Adding insult to injury, the proposed new committee has been given the narrowest of lenses upon which to review the waterworks system. Rather than address the question ratepayers are asking now, its mandate, under the proposed Terms of Reference, is constrained to examine water rates from 2027 to 2031.
And, rather than present this cynical proposal at a committee of the whole meeting, this puppet governance notion was put before last night’s council meeting.
We can only hope Council rejected it out of hand. Not because it failed to provide lasting governance. Not because this is a thinly veiled attempt to set up a citizen panel to take the heat for some tough decisions. It must reject another committee because this issue was, and is, about proper governance. Until this is fixed, everything else is pointless and a waste of energy.
To that end, council members along with ratepayers must now insist upon a permanent Waterworks Commission— peopled with ratepayers and council members who pay a water bill. There are models as near as Kingston that this community may emulate.
It must be tasked with long-term planning for finance, operations, and redevelopment. These decisions must be made by the folks who fund this enterprise— those who must live with the consequences.
At this point, all we can do is hope that enough of council is paying attention now and that it has rejected another committee—and begun to push for proper governance.
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