Comment
Or else
Mayor Steve Ferguson has found himself in quite a box. While he acknowledges Council still holds the final say over whether to proceed with massive waterworks projects, he worries that failing to push forward with $300 million in waterworks spending could trigger “lawsuits in the hundreds of millions of dollars”. He suggests that developers and landowners are relying on Shire Hall to stay on track and continue to extend waterworks infrastructure to their projects. Or else. (See story here).
We’ve come a long way from the days when waterworks expansion was about serving County residents. Now, the story has become about serving developers’ interests and avoiding the threat of lawsuits. It is time to get off this ride.
The original waterworks plan, unveiled in 2020, was promoted as a means to get developers to pay for waterworks upgrades that would benefit existing users. Shire Hall’s leadership assured us that “growth would pay for growth.” Developers would fund waterworks systems that we didn’t need immediately, but would replace the existing ones—which were eventually expected to wear out. That was the sales pitch.
The price tag back then was $100 million. Better yet, Shire Hall had figured out a way to get developers to pay upfront. There was much backslapping and self-praise. Senior leadership won awards for its funding scheme.
Sadly, neither plan has worked out. The municipality has already spent $50 million. The award-winning funding scheme has delivered just $12 million. And Mayor Ferguson now suggests the County must push forward with $250 million more in waterworks spending or risk being sued by developers. We are a long way from the promises of 2020.
Mayor Ferguson now argues that municipal Secondary Plans in Wellington and Picton and provincial legislation compel the municipality to fund these projects. That failing to do so puts the County in legal jeopardy.
He says boundary lines drawn on Secondary Plans in Picton and Wellington imply an obligation by the municipality to deliver water and sewer services to those landowners. He also cites provincial rules that require a municipality to be ready to accommodate three years of new homebuilding, “which it cannot at the moment,” claimed Ferguson.
Neither argument stands up to scrutiny.
Let’s start with the matter of the three-year capacity to build homes. Weirdly, Mayor Ferguson’s claim is contradicted by Shire Hall’s own data.
Over the past three years, Shire Hall has issued building permits for 465 homes across the entire County. The municipality says it has room for 600 new homes in its waterworks in Picton and Wellington. This is Shire Hall data. The municipality has demonstrated ample capacity for three years based on real-world data.
There is no other prudent basis upon which to measure demand. A spreadsheet listing of homes developers might-build-one-day does not meet this test. It’s speculation. Gambling. With waterworks users’ money.
Furthermore, lines on a Secondary Plan do not create a financial obligation—certainly not a $300 million one. It is absurd to contend this municipality must fund miles of pumps and pipes simply because a developer owns a field within the Secondary Plan boundary. It is implausible that the province would compel a small rural municipality to take on so much debt—when historical trends suggest the County is likely planning a vast overbuilding of waterworks capacity.
A reasonable reading of municipal regulations suggests a municipality will provide services to developments on an as-and-when-needed basis—and only after a full costing and an approved financing plan have been established that provides certainty that “growth pays for growth” on a timely basis. That is not what is on the table here.
Building a super regional water plant in Wellington and pumping water to Picton defies these basic tenets. There is no financial plan. There are no funding commitments from developers. The municipality cannot ensure that “growth pays for growth” in a meaningful timeframe. If it did, the waterworks utility wouldn’t already be $38 million underwater.
All Shire Hall has left from 2020 is unchecked ambition, a track record of costly mistakes, and a mayor convinced that anything but complete obedience to developers’ whims will result in legal peril.
If Mayor Ferguson feels he is powerless to regulate development activity in Prince Edward County, it may be time for him to step aside so that others may do so. If Mayor Ferguson feels developers hold all the cards, he has already lost. We have already lost.
Comments (0)