Get out of the way

The challenges we face in Prince Edward County—declining school enrollment, decaying roads, a shortage of affordable housing and a sputtering economy due to a shrinking manufacturing and industrial base—aren’t unique to this community. Across rural Ontario, these trends chip away at the fading veneer of once vital and optimistic towns and villages. These forces are bigger than one community—bigger than the ambitions of council (t’were that a thing).

But the County has something other places don’t. People want to be here. They want to visit, to linger, to come back and to live here. It need not be grand or opulent—the natural beauty of the place and the tactile presence of its history and agrarian traditions attracts folks with varied stories, interests and backgrounds.

People want to come to Prince Edward County. They want to join this community. To raise their family. To build a business. To make sandwiches for the church luncheon. To trim the brush along the Millennium Trail. To reveal long-dormant thespian talents on a County stage. To watch the birds come and go at Prince Edward Point.

We, however, are unable—or unwilling—to make this happen. We are stuck.

The young man kindly mixing me a splendid gin and tonic at the Drake Devonshire lives in Foxboro. Meanwhile, real estate agents maintain lists of folks who insist on being notified the second a home comes on the market. Rare is the home that lingers with a for sale sign for more than a few days. People want to live here—but we have nothing for them.

Durham is currently among Canada’s hottest real estate markets as folks weary of years stuffed in an urban condo look farther afield seeking a back yard and driveway. Room for kids. A cat and dog. The average sale price in Durham was up 25 per cent in September to $555,054, even as the number of listings grew.

So, many in Durham are cashing in. Looking eastward. For these folks, Cobourg, Brighton, and Quinte West look awfully attractive. Prince Edward County looks even better. Sadly, we have nothing to offer them.

Only 85 new home permits were issued by Shire Hall in the first nine months of 2016. It is up from 76 built by this time last year—but still less than half the pace of new homebuilding of our neighbours in Quinte West.

Why is that? Why is Quinte West reaping the tax base, the new waterworks consumers, the young families and the investment— as the County edges steadily toward becoming an exclusive enclave for prosperous retired folk? A community where the folks who serve our cocktails live an hour away?

According to builders, the County remains the most difficult, time-consuming, inflexible and expensive place to develop in the entire region. It isn’t just the eye-watering amount of development and connection charges extracted by this County compared to other jurisdictions in the region— though that is part of it. Nor is it just the staggering amount of security developers are required to post in order to put a hole in the ground.

It is, they say, an attitude. They face obstacles and delays at every turn and seemingly no effort or willingness to work through a problem. So they stop trying. They don’t build here. They put their capital, their marketing and their jobs to work in Quinte West, Belleville and elsewhere.

But this isn’t new.

Mayor Robert Quaiff, planning and works staff, as well as a handful of councillors, heard these complaints loudly a year ago at a gathering of builders and developers in Wellington. Mayor Quaiff had invited them—he wanted to hear their concerns, to find solutions and to assure them the County welcomed their investment. But it wasn’t true.

A year has come and gone, and nothing has changed. A committee of developers, County staff and council members have been meeting over the past few months but have produced no recommendations—no remedies.

We need a fresh attitude. One that welcomes investment and new families. This does not mean shedding the values that make the County a desirable and unique community. But it does require a vision. And that vision must come from the top.

This is something the mayor and council can do. They can lead. They can set targets and performance goals. They can insist that calls or emails are responded to within 24 hours. They can aim for brownfield to site plan approval within a fixed number of weeks. They can set turnaround times for studies and reports. Measure this performance in days or weeks, rather than months.

No one is asking that corners be cut—only that Shire Hall recognize that it operates in a competitive market and that time and money matter. We are losing this race. At stake are our schools, roads and waterworks. Worse, we are making the County unaffordable but for a very few. We need a fresh attitude.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca