Fiasco prone

Maybe it is as good as we can do. Maybe we have to take out a 45- year loan (which will cost $6 million by the time it is paid back) to fund a $2.8 million eight-unit walk-up apartment block in Picton—in which just four units will be considered affordable. Maybe we—County ratepayers—must subsidize the development, connection and operating costs every year for the life of this building. Maybe it is our job—our role.

ut it would be a lot easier to swallow if we knew the County’s Affordable Housing Corporation (Housing Corp) was up to the task. It would be better if we believed the requisite skills for financing, building, and managing affordable housing were at work in the County. It is not evident that we do.

As one council member noted last week: “Maybe after seven years and no achievements, the County ought not be in the affordable housing business.”

Every other week, the province or federal government rolls out another new wheelbarrow of cash to get homes built. Yet this municipality has not managed (so far) to get in the way of any of this money.

As reported in these pages, the County’s Housing Corp has recently embarked on a dialogue with an Ottawa builder who, it believes, has the experience and expertise the County lacks, to help navigate the murky and ever-shifting waters of affordable housing financing and processes.

To be clear, the builder is just a builder. And that is all it does. But it seems to know the affordable housing terrain. It knows the processes. The funding channels. The triggers. It has been down this road before with other municipalities. That is its competitive advantage.

It is a good thing that the Housing Corp has found a savvy builder—one who may add value to the project. But it isn’t the basis of a healthy relationship. The developer— the Housing Corp—ought to have this expertise and knowledge. That the County is setting forth, relying upon the insight of a single builder, is worrying.

It is seventy-six trombones worrying. Yagot- trouble-right-here-in-River-City worrying.

Maybe it is too much to ask a small rural municipality to do things other than fix roads, cut grass, clear snow and maintain a safe, clean water supply. Maybe it is unreasonable to expect it to do things outside this scope. Maybe Shire Hall is trying to do too much, with too little.

A project to run pipes across Wellington is now entering its third year. The contract was awarded in 2023 with a price tag of $22.9 million. The job was supposed to be finished last June. It won’t be completed until next summer at the earliest. The cost will be much, much greater than the County budgeted. When it is done, it will be ready with the added capacity to serve a predicted population explosion that didn’t transpire. No new homes have been built in Wellington in years.

Bad planning. Bad execution. Terrible project management. As predicted at the outset, existing water ratepayers are funding this fiasco through unnecessarily high water bills. And they will do so for many years.

Some will shrug their shoulders and conclude this is par for the course for municipal infrastructure projects. Maybe. But shouldn’t we learn from our mistakes? Shouldn’t we learn that the stove is hot— to pull our hand away?

Maybe, one day, we might muster the humility to admit there are some things a small municipality cannot and should not do.

But not today. The Housing Corp is about to embark on a project of the likes the County has never undertaken before. The financing is a black hole. It has no track record of developing, building and managing affordable housing. There is no apparent project management expertise that can guide this project. Folks are doing the best they can.

It isn’t enough. Someday we might admit it. But not today.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca