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Pot o’ gold
The scale of the ambition is breathtaking. Roads. Doctors. Waterworks. Housing. Each was once primarily the responsibility of the province. Rural municipalities were expected to help. But it was the province that drove investment and re-investment. The province had the skills, the experience, and the financing capacity to do these things. The province set the time frame and produced the funding.
Most rural communities still function this way. They have neither the wherewithal nor the ambition to do more than assist on the edges of these big, formerly provincial responsibilities. But not Prince Edward County. Not for a while now. This place has embarked on a bold unspoken experiment—to ratchet up the downloading from the province onto property taxpayers. An experiment to see what happens. Or, until something breaks. Or residents leave. Or investment collapses.
There is nothing Shire Hall can’t do. No project is too big. No expense it can’t pass along to residents. One day, Prince Edward County will be a case study to understand how much the property taxpayer can bear—to understand the impact of downloading vast swathes of provincial costs on communities like ours. This place will be used to assess the contorting impact of doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and quintupling property tax rates.
Yet, the auger is still turning. The ambition of Shire Hall and Council is unchecked. There are no more guardrails. It has found a deep, rich vein of idle cash in residents’ pockets. Shire Hall seems intent on mining it until there is little left.
Last week alone, Shire Hall made fresh commitments to doctor recruitment, it bought an old school ($1.4 million) and it revealed plans for a new $105 million water pipeline. (On top of another $100 million-plus waterworks project underway in Wellington). All are to be funded by residents of this small, rural community. Just another normal week.
Not at issue is whether these projects, and all the other major projects it has undertaken in recent years, are worthy. Most are. Perhaps not nearly at the scale proposed— but worthy nonetheless.
The issue is what such ambitions are doing to this community. Everyone wants nice things. But most of us must budget and save to achieve them. We must manage our finances. Few of us can rely on a large pot of taxpayer money to scoop out when we run low.
I once considered such a reflex was a oneoff. Intermittent perhaps. Accidents of circumstance. Of planning gone awry. Instead, it is clear now that it is a pattern. With each successful scoop, Shire Hall’s ambition expands. As long as some councillors really, really, really want something—or have persuaded themselves they ‘must’ do something— or that this is what the electorate wants, reaching into the pot of taxpayer money has become a habit. Easier with each dip. All constraints are gone.
Except gravity.
Roads are critical bits of infrastructure. The province once funded Highways 33 and 49. Through grants and programs, they funded improvements to municipal roads and bridges. Now, it is the property taxpayer who must fund all of it. Shire Hall could dump the entire pot of taxpayer money into its roads, but it still wouldn’t make much of a dent. But no one says that part out loud. Instead, they just reach deeper into the pot.
Physicians were entirely funded by the province. A shortage of doctors, however, has led to municipalities creating cash incentives to attract and retain doctors. Rural communities must now use property taxpayer funds to compete with other doctor-deprived communities for the most attractive package. Each year the price to play goes up. Round and round we go.
Waterworks expansion and buildouts were almost entirely in the realm of the province. Now, it is fully dependent on the users of the service to fund renewal. Like roads, there are just too few users to fund this ambition. Yet Shire Hall continues to barrel through the critical warning signs.
Large cities built and managed housing—but rarely did rural communities venture into such expensive activities. Shire Hall now tinkers on the edges. Senior levels of government have declined to help, so Shire Hall returns to the pot of money.
Meanwhile, the administrative ranks at Shire Hall swell commensurately in anticipation that assuming more provincial responsibilities means more work. More consultants. More everything.
Yet, we remain just 25,000 folks. The population of this place changes, yet it doesn’t grow. Turnover is huge. Meanwhile the amount we fund Shire Hall (taxes and user fees) has risen five times. Next year it will be six. Seven the year after that.
That’s the experiment. You know who the guinea pigs are.
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