Full stop

For more than five years, Shire Hall officials, Mayor Steve Ferguson, and a majority of Council insisted that many thousands of new homes would soon be built in Prince Edward County. Four thousand new homes were imminent, they said. Eight thousand new homes would be erected within 10 years, they said.

Over and over again, they repeated these predictions. They ran full-page advertisements in these pages to proclaim that a population boom was coming and that the municipality would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure to be ready for the influx.

In front of 600 folks in Wellington, they insisted they were right, and residents were wrong.

Tomorrow, Shire Hall will admit it was wrong.

Tomorrow, Shire Hall will acknowledge that its population growth assumptions were wildly overstated. Tomorrow, it should also admit that the bits they’ve built so far are overbudget and overdue.

Nothing has gone to plan. There is nothing Shire Hall officials know to be true anymore. Yet, tomorrow, they will suggest that their original plan remains sound—that all that is needed is more time. Gasp.

The folks funding the County’s waterworks misadventures—County ratepayers— need to take notice.

In fairness, it is indeed painfully hard to turn back five years of bad choices—even when they are based on bad assumptions. Maybe it is a lot to expect all the studies, provincial assessments and funding applications to be swept into a dustbin somewhere— even if that is where they belong.

But neither Shire Hall nor Council can ignore the implications of this foundational error. They cannot compound their error by pressing ahead with regional water plant that may never be needed, feasible or affordable. They cannot shackle existing ratepayers to a plan they know was produced under false assumptions.

It is a plan that so far has burned through more than $40 million, with only a water tower, an EQ tank, and a half-finished set of trunklines to show for it. Missing from the report is an accounting of the overspending already spilled on these projects so far. Nor is there an approximation of the amount needed to complete the trunklines and pumping station. It is a serious omission.

Yet, unless and until a “condition assessment” of Picton’s and Wellington’s water plants determines that the life and capacity of these plants may be extended, a regional water plant in Wellington to serve Bloomfield and Picton, remains the municipality’s preferred choice—with all the costs and risk it implies.

That means potentially pushing forward to spend another $40 million on this plant and $37. 2 million on a wastewater plant, before this term of council is done—before voters are given the opportunity—by way of a municipal election—to choose a different path.

Meanwhile, the market for new homes has evaporated. Not just in the County—across Canada. Crushingly, power-of-sales continue to climb each month across Ontario. Lending markets are calcifying. The prospect of a rebound in new homebuilding in Prince Edward County is many years away. There is no urgency to act.

But perhaps the most egregious oversight in the report, however, is its failure to acknowledge the folks who pay the bills. Recommendation #4 explains that staff will “engage with the development community to obtain feedback on implications of adjustments to the utilized growth rates.” (Hand to forehead).

Shire Hall is keen to ensure developers are still onside with their plans. Sadly, though hardly surprising, there is no comparable interest in checking in on the folks who fund and underwrite the entire business. No need to talk to the 600 folks who filled the community centre hall in August 2024, who understood their plans were folly then.

Shire Hall staff and council must stop and take a good, hard, long look at what has happened on this file since 2020. They must stop to think deeply about the unnecessary costs they’ve already incurred upon water customers. They must stop to answer fundamental questions about how they strayed so far from rational planning. Why did they spend five years denying the obvious, ignoring existing ratepayers and pretending it all made sense?

Until these questions are answered satisfactorily, Shire Hall and this term of council cannot be trusted to make decisions on this file. They are compromised. They must stop.

Yes, many of the senior folks working on this file are new—they may not wear all of this responsibility. And not all of Council think with one mind.

But neither can they recommend pushing forward, knowing what they know now—just because money was wasted on bad assumptions in the past. Or because the province might ask for its grant money back. These are not serious arguments.

They must stop. We need an election to clear the air.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca