Clear-eyed

To view the Draft Official Plan. click here.

It is a good plan. Not a great one—but good enough. The County’s Official Plan rewrite celebrates its tenth birthday this year. An awkward age—no longer precocious, but neither has this ten-year-old cultivated the guile or confidence to navigate the world with surefootedness. The 2021 draft OP—while riven with compromises and carved into a wee box of the Province’s creation, meant to give the illusion of self-rule—reflects well-enough Prince Edward County as it is today. It erects tolerable guard rails guiding it to a plausible and manageable future. It is likely as good as such plans get. There will be no fanfare. No parades. No signing ceremony. But one day this summer, we will wake up to a new Official Plan. And on we will go.

The risk inherent in chewing up ten years to write a plan with an expected lifespan of just five is that it boils down to a mush of meaninglessness. And it is undoubtedly true that rewriting the rules governing land use planning tends to favour those with entrenched interests. The folks most interested in things staying pretty much as they are. And it remains a lingering stain that in protecting these interests, we continue to stifle innovative land uses—especially by way of smaller ag lots. Or that we don’t champion old barns to ensure they remain productive and a treasured part of our landscape. Those ambitions must simmer for another day.

But this OP is not mush. It is an honest and reasonably accurate portrait of the place—its character, its allure and its warts. And its promise. It is an achievement that the County’s economy, prospects and challenges are recognizable at all in this Official Plan. (Remember that we have muddled through with the current OP written when Jean Chretien became Prime Minister and Kurt Cobain fronted a popular grunge band.) This OP reflects a clear-eyed assessment of Prince Edward County, the pressures that have forged the place as we know it, the forces pushing to change it and the means to navigate the next decade toward a community we will recognize and want to live. It is Prince Edward County. For good or ill.

Much will be made of the decision of the three Ameliasburgh councillors voting against this late draft. More will be made of Councillor Andreas Bolik’s call to “extricate” Ameliasburgh from the County. Much noise signifying little.

There is, and always has been, a vocal constituency living along Rednersville Road whose lives are mostly intertwined with Belleville, Quinte West or beyond. To the extent they consider Shire Hall or the County at all, it is mainly transactional. Every Ameliasburgh representative since amalgamation has memorized the portion of property taxes their ward pays Shire Hall. They tend to bear the aggrieved sense that they are owed more from this arrangement.

But while the frustration is real, the threat is empty. The province still bears the scars of its last municipal re-organization project and will be reluctant to wander down this path for a generation or more. Neither is it inclined to carve out a chunk of what is essentially an island and bolt it to the mainland. Not administratively. Not electorally. Nor any other way. Ameliasburgh voters might be better served by sending folks to Shire Hall who are interested in making the place work.

The more resonant bit in Councillor Bolik’s comments was his frustration for the fate of this term of Council. His remarks were surely fuelled by the isolation we have all endured over the past year in this pandemic. For even when Council assembled as a socially distant group over the past year, Bolik tended to participate from home. He has been outside the club-like bubble of collegiality that tends to bind councils together—encouraging them to sing from a common hymnal.

Bolik recalled the enthusiasm and excitement that gripped the new Council in the days after the election. That they would be different. They giddily rejected every Council before them, believing this time things would be different. Instead, they became mired in the same bog as their predecessors. Mostly ‘spinning their wheels’ and ‘lurching from crisis to crisis.’

But Bolik’s complaints highlight a governance problem. A problem that won’t be fixed by slicing off part of the County. County government has too many council members. With no affiliation to ideas, principles or philosophy. They are guided primarily by the loudest voices in ten wards on any given issue. In this populist arrangement, it is ridiculously easy to persuade eight councillors to block or defer. It is much harder to forge a coalition to build something—to do something. So despite good intentions, they spin their wheels. We should not be surprised when a councillor in a flash of self-awareness, realizes he is just a passenger on a bus that is mired in mud up to the axles and going nowhere. We can’t be surprised when this frustration bubbles to the surface.

Much will be made, too, of new restrictions on severing countryside lots. But this complaint, too, is misplaced. We can’t afford our roads. While successive councils have found it impossible to say these words aloud, it remains an arithmetic and undeniable fact. Too many kilometres. Too few taxpayers. Each kilometre deteriorating faster than we can keep up. Countryside homes compound this problem. It has been demonstrated repeatedly in every corner of this place over the past two decades.

Enabling more houses along rural byways drives more maintenance requirements. More wear and tear. More folks inevitably resent the potholes that mar their road. It does not matter that this condition defines many County roads. Or that we lack the means to fix them. They just want their road fixed. Improved. Or rebuilt.

This OP understands the frailty of local government and has set its goals accordingly. Heroically, it seeks not to make existing problems worse. It is hardly a snappy marketing slogan for a new OP—but this document is honest and clear-eyed of what the County is and where it is going. It is a good plan.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca