Not adding up
It doesn’t work. It will be over a century and a half before existing water users are paid back for the biggest infrastructure spending ever undertaken in this community. The project size and costs are grossly oversized for the rate of population growth expected by Shire Hall’s experts. It bears repeating: existing water customers in […]
Who will pay?
Who do you think will pay? When thousands of new homes don’t emerge from the fields surrounding Wellington and Picton over the next 20 years? When the County’s population fails to double in size? Who will pay the $300 million needed to fund the waterworks expansion? Shire Hall is building waterworks as fast as it […]
Terminal failure
It is hard to see how Mayor Ferguson and a handful of council members could have managed things worse—how they twisted a moderately challenging issue into a pure fiasco. We tend not to see public inquiries in local politics, but if municipal leadership ever warranted third-party scrutiny, it is around the Picton Terminals’ settlement. There […]
Adrift
You are wrong, said Mayor Steve Ferguson. Occasionally shouting. Always indignant. He spent much of the past year telling Wellington residents, nervous waterworks customers, and this newspaper that we were wrong. Mayor Ferguson went so far as to take out a full-page ad to explain the various ways we were wrong. Lately, however, Mayor Ferguson’s […]
Flushed away
When the book is written on the largest infrastructure expansion ever taken on in the County, last week’s audit committee meeting will surely mark the chapter where the plot fell apart. Fully and completely. The committee learned last week that there is no basis to believe thousands of homes will be built here or that […]
No. Thank you.
Give it back. Should the province approve an $18.3 million grant for County waterworks expected this month, I pray, as a water customer, Council says: No, thank you. It is not as though the water utility couldn’t use the money—it can—but rather that Shire Hall is likely to hold up this pittance as a reason— […]
Say anything
The race is on. The clock is ticking. Shire Hall can feel opposition mounting to massive waterworks spending across Prince Edward County. Meanwhile, their explanations don’t add up. The marketing spin is a thin fabric of half-truths, breadcrumbs leading nowhere, and the slipperiest of red herrings. The argument that developers were paying for any it […]
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 […]
Touched
Over the course of two road trips this spring, I was fortunate to have travelled the breadth of the continental United States. Coast to coast. Rhode Island in April and across the great expanse of the plains to Seattle last week. It truly is a magnificent, glorious, and, at times, a sorrily decadent place. (Travelling […]
Four things
ONE A warm thank you to everyone who left their homes last Monday night to join your neighbours in voicing their worries and concerns about the quarter-billion-dollar waterworks plans in Wellington. More than 500 of you! Your presence sent a loud and clear message to decision-makers that you want them to stop and re-evaluate their […]