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Keep digging
To be clear, the County’s waterworks utility defies easy solutions. It is a hodgepodge of pipes, pumps and buildings spread across six corners of the County, its tentacles stretching into Belleville and Quinte West. None of pieces fit well together, many are nearing the end of their useful lives, all require significant investment. Meanwhile, the utility’s customer base is shrinking and consumption is falling. If it were a private utility it would be considering bankruptcy protection. But it’s not a business—the ratepayers can always be counted on to pay more.
That is all to say that the following isn’t a criticism or second guessing of the waterworks committee and its conclusions—for in putting this municipality’s connection charges on a more competitive footing with neighbouring communities, the County now has a fighting chance to attract more residential development. It has further forged a consensus that the long-term solution relies on growth—adding more users to the waterworks system and spreading the operating and reinvestment costs across a greater number of ratepayers. It was good work.
Yet there remain stones unturned. Opportunities not pursued. Before we conclude there is nothing more to be done—that we have been condemned to pay the highest water rates in the province forever—we need to look deeper. We need to press on.
WHERE TO START
1. Buried in the forecasting models that project escalating water rates as far as the eye can see, is a 20-year capital program currently targeted to spend about $74 million. This is the amount estimated to replace the underground infrastructure and plants across the system as it is needed over the next two decades.
Waterworks staff had already been through this plan and had slashed in advance of the waterworks committee review in light of declining volumes. But we need to dig deeper. The plan needs to be put back on the table and dissected bit by bit. We need outside eyes helping to determine what is essential and what can be put off.
Waterworks officials will resist reopening this program, fearing an overzealous committee will cut too deeply, leaving the County—and professional reputations—exposed to the risk of breakdown, failure and non-compliance. While these concerns are legitimate and fair, the impact of unaffordable rates is borne by the entire community. This is a call that ultimately rests with the users of the system.
If you live in house that could really benefit from new windows, the purchase decision, when and if, will likely be made based upon your savings, income and cash flow. If you don’t have the money, no amount of professional advice insisting upon the value of this upgrade is likely to alter your decision. If it’s a matter food on the table or new windows, the choice is plain. So far we haven’t been given this choice, nor have we been particularly diligent about asking for it.
One wee example. Last year, the waterworks utility spent $250,000 replacing water meters in Wellington homes as part of a multi-year plan to upgrade this equipment across the County. (It is Rossmore and Fenwood Gardens’ turn this year, where $160,000 has been allocated for the new meters.) This seems strange since the utility earns an ever-dwindling share of its revenue from water consumption. It is why it now costs you $66.91 each and every month for your water and wastewater service even if you never turn on a tap or flush the toilet. Our waterworks utility is spending as much as $1 million over the next few years replacing meters that measure an increasingly diminishing flow. It’s not good business.
So far the committee has not yet peered into the 20-year plan, to pull it apart and to recommend its own changes. That is job one.
2. Cut the 19 households on the Peat’s Point water system a cheque. Upon amalgamation, the province compelled the County to assume management of this neighbourhood well supply system. It costs the waterworks utility more than $3,400 per household per year for Shire Hall to deliver this water to these households. Now the province is prodding the County to install a storage system in the event the well is taken off line. The cost is prohibitive. So the County is looking at spending hundreds of thousands of ratepayers’ dollars tying the
Peat’s Point homeowners to the Fenwood Gardens/ Rossmore system—another outrageously expensive water system.
Instead, the County might better offer each Peat’s Point homeowner a lump sum to dig their own well and walk away from the municipal service. Or, we could charge these homeowners a rate much closer to the actual cost of delivering their water.
Yes, perhaps the province would reject Shire Hall’s method of seeking relief from this unreasonable burden. But it would, at the very least, however, provoke a long overdue discussion.
3. Renegotiate with Belleville. Our friendly neighbours across the Norris Whitney bridge charge us $3.95 per cubic metre for water the County pumps across the bridge to Rossmore and Fenwood Gardens. Yet they charge just $2.25 to any other bulk purchaser of its water—to complete strangers. Same water, same distribution point. But the County pays 75 per cent more than anybody else. It’s called gouging. Neighbours ought not deal with each other this way. We need to force this conversation.
4. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, convert the waterworks committee into a permanent commission. Transfer governance of this complex utility to the folks who pay the bill and have a stake in the system. Recent history demonstrates that an irregular examination of the business, triggered only after it has swung off the rails, isn’t working and clearly inadequate to the proper governance of this business.
A full-time commission can dig deep into the business, its capital plans, its external relationships and its workings with the development community. It can embark on an in-depth conversation with the province to elevate grievances and find solutions to lingering issues.
Let’s keep digging.
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