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Informed consent
If you pay a water bill in Prince Edward County, you should know the risk that Shire Hall is taking on—on your behalf. If it works out, senior leadership deserves all the credit and recognition it has garnered. But if it doesn’t, it is County waterworks customers who will pay—and only waterworks customers. Shire Hall is walking a highwire— but it is you and I who will feel the pain if it all comes tumbling to the ground.
It bears repeating that the County’s waterworks system—serving Carrying Place, Consecon, Ameliasburgh, Rossmore, Fenwood Gardens, Peat’s Point, Wellington, Bloomfield and Picton—is a standalone utility. While it is governed and managed by Shire Hall, it is funded entirely by its customers who pay water bills. As it is constituted currently, the utility has no financial recourse to local government or other County taxpayers. The utility’s debts, compliance obligations, and capital expenditures are the sole responsibility of its 4,600 customers. You and me.
That this utility is governed by folks— Council—most of whom are not customers of the utility and thus have no stake in its success or failure—or the risks it assumes—is grotesque beyond comprehension. It is a wildly inappropriate arrangement.
So, what’s the big deal?
Shire Hall expects Wellington’s population to explode—from 2,000 to more than 8,600 people over the next decade. Not everyone is confident in this prediction. Nevertheless, Shire Hall is preparing for that day. It is driving a complete overhaul of the village’s waterworks system to accommodate it. New water tower, new pipes, new plants. The current cost estimate is $100 million.
To help pay for it, Shire Hall made a deal with a developer whereby it will pay development charges upfront once its subdivision agreement is approved. (The developer had eighteen months to get it done. Its time has elapsed. It says, however, it is close—therefore, Shire Hall has agreed to hold the capacity allocation aside in anticipation the developer will soon meet its conditions. We shall see.)
The best-case scenario will see the developer approved for 320 new homes (the maximum permitted before new plants are built) in the coming weeks and months. Assuming, for rough calculations only, that every new build is a single- or semi-detached with more than two bedrooms, the developer will write a cheque for about $7 million to the municipality in upfront DCs. It has already provided a security deposit of $4 million. Taken together, the developer will have paid about $11 million dollars upfront—before it scratches dirt north of the Trail. So far, so good.
Shire Hall, however, has already spent $18 million on expanding Wellington’s waterworks to accommodate this development. It will spend another $11 million or so on underground works later this fall or winter. That would be $29 million if it stopped spending money today.
It means water bill payers across the County are on the hook for $18 million—to expand Wellington’s waterworks. This is the best-case scenario.
A more worrying prospect is that Shire Hall continues to push ahead to build new water processing and wastewater treatment plants in the village at a price tag of more than $50 million. The information session last week was the next step in a steady march to this mount. There aren’t many opportunities left to push back. Soon shovels will be in the ground, debentures issued, and more debt is piled onto County waterworks customers.
So what happens if we stopped today? What if Shire Hall paused to assess the current market and concluded it might take a decade or more for the developer to sell and build 320 homes? In a village of 1,200? The developer has been sitting on the land for 17 years. Is it unreasonable to expect it might sit on it another decade or two?
Why must we rush ahead to spend $50 million on new plants? $50 million of waterworks customers’ money? What if we pressed pause?
Doing so is neither cost- nor risk-free, and the deal with the developer certainly complicates matters. But we should talk about it. We should—as the bearers of the risks—understand the trade-offs. The pros and cons. Not Council—but the folks who pay a water bill. It requires informed consent by those who will be impacted if it goes wrong.
Informed consent cannot be achieved by a series of engineering drawings arrayed around the Rotary Room. A cynical person might see these sessions as empty box-ticking exercises designed to be incomprehensible and discourage participation as too complicated and technical for a non-engineer.
We are the customer. We are taking all the risk. Paying all the bills. We need a better conversation.
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