Invitation

A reader wrote last week complaining of “reading incessantly” my comments on the County’s waterworks. There are two sides to a story, the reader wrote. Why not give Mayor Steve Ferguson some space in the paper to state the case for the other side? It’s a good suggestion.

Leave aside that the reader seems to have overlooked the dozens of questions this column has posed through this series of comments that yielded only echoing silence from Shire Hall. Leave aside too, that collectively these comments represent a prolonged primal scream for a better conversation—the letter-writer’s suggestion remains a good one.

So let this serve as a formal invitation to Mayor Ferguson to present the case for the massive waterworks expansion in Wellington—the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken in the County. Please explain who will pay for it. And when. Lay out the risks to all County waterworks users. Tell us why the waterworks utility isn’t governed by the stakeholders of what is a fully user-pay system.

There are many more questions, but this is a start. Perhaps it leads to a conversation. And this column can move on to other matters.

In the meantime, allow me to make some corrections and clarifications. I muddled the water and wastewater rates in my commentary last week. The actual water rate in 2023 is $3.35 per cubic metre (m3) in the summer and $2.24/m3 in the winter. The wastewater rate is $4.17/m3 in the summer and $2.77/m3 in the winter.

The below chart presents the corrected data. Sadly, it doesn’t alter Prince Edward County’s ranking as among Ontario’s most expensive water systems. Nor does it temper its harrowing trajectory.

I must also clarify the number of customers that make up this user-pay system. I have tended to present the number of households using the waterworks system in the County as approximately 4,600. It’s a bit more complicated than that. But for the purposes of a common baseline: As of January 2021, the waterworks system comprised 4,504 residential water customers and 1,398 customers classified as general—mostly commercial, industrial and institutional. On the wastewater side, there were 4,475 customers— 89 per cent of these were residential households, with the remainder characterized as general. All wastewater customers are also water customers.

But the bottom line is this: There are too few customers on this fully user-pay system to fund a $100 million expansion to Wellington. Whether it’s 4,500 residential or 6,000 total customers, it doesn’t work.

It gets more absurd to think they could afford a regional waterworks system, yet the first step—an environmental assessment—is already underway. Public meetings are coming. Layer on the ambitions of a fresh new master servicing plan in Picton and Bloomfield, and it all becomes rather fantastical.

The only way this works is a sudden and persistent burst of new homebuilding—for a generation or more. All this planning relies on thousands upon thousands more folks buying new homes and helping to pay the debt and operating costs being assumed on our behalf. It requires millions of square feet of new stores and commercial development. It relies on a wild and unrelenting building boom that— outside a few neighbourhoods in Picton—seems disconnected from reality. Or possibility.

Specifically in Wellington, the plan relies on the population growing fourfold to 8,600 people, becoming the largest town in the County. If that seems optimistic, you may want to start asking your own questions.

Of course, in Wellington, Shire Hall has developed an innovative development charge pre-payment plan to help underwrite some of the up-front cost. It may help. It may yet prove to be a brilliant stroke. But there remain too many questions and too many risks. If the new home-buying horde fails to show up in Prince Edward County, the burden of paying back this debt and funding the over-built works rests solely on waterworks customers.

One last point. There are no villains in this story. I believe that Shire Hall is working in what it perceives as the best interests of residents and waterworks customers. The proof is in the successful renegotiation of bulk water rates from Belleville, serving Rossmore and Fenwood Gardens. It is a remarkable achievement for waterworks customers and cannot be overlooked in this discussion.

But there is an inherent conflict between operating in the best interest of the County and the waterworks utility. These interests overlap in places, but they are not the same. This is why they must be governed separately—particularly when it involves long-term planning and managing financial risk.

Nor do I believe Council is acting in anything but good faith.

That problem is structural. Too much geography, not enough humans and a single-tier municipality. Council has too much to do. Too much to govern. In many rural communities, municipal responsibilities are split between an upper (regional) and lower (local) tier. But not here. Now add in a complex waterworks utility that serves fewer than half of the households in the community.

It is, and always was, too much. As a result, the waterworks utility has never received the attention it needs. It was, and is, an afterthought.

Stakeholders need to be part of the long-term planning. They need to be there to ensure the utility is accountable and transparent.

Dear Mayor Ferguson, please tell readers the other side of the story.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca