Stuck

Jordan Yarrow wants to build a house in Wellington. Last week, the young man managed to sever a lot from his property on Belleville Road. Sadly, it could be decades before he is allowed to build. He might be an old man before he can start digging a hole for his new home in Wellington.

He is not alone. At least four other property owners (likely dozens more) are blocked from building homes in the village.

County planners told Yarrow and Council that there isn’t capacity in the waterworks system to accommodate his home. Or any other new home in Wellington. “We in the planning department are told there is no capacity,” said planning manager Mike Michaud artfully.

But this isn’t true. Moreover, the planning manager knows it isn’t true. He was careful to explain that no capacity actually means some capacity—just not for this young man. Nor anyone else not named Kaitlin.

There is, indeed, sizeable room left in the waterworks system—as much as 320 homes worth. But Shire Hall made a deal. It traded all the remaining room in this system to a developer in exchange for $12 million. It won awards for this deal.

The good news is that this money will help to repay the $45 million the municipality has sunk into expanding the Wellington waterworks (water tower, trunk lines to the plant, overflow tank, etc.) for this developer. The bad news is that until the developer decides to build homes in the village, nobody else can.

Now Shire Hall is stuck. Supremely. It can’t force the developer to build. It can’t get its capacity back. It has added at least $30 million in fresh debt. And it can’t build another home in Wellington.

Councillor Brad Nieman summed up the predicament for Mr. Yarrow.

“It could be 20 to 30 years down the road,” said Nieman to the would-be homebuilder. “I want to make sure everybody knows where they stand.”

The municipal planner confirmed that, yes, a holding symbol would be put on this lot, on title, to warn any future buyers that it cannot be developed. A scarlet H marks the village lot as untouchable.

Mr. Yarrow put on a brave face. But it was clear he was taken aback by the news. He believed—because he had been told by County planners—that the recent reconstruction of Belleville Road was the roadblock to building a home. He thought he might have to wait a year or two.

“For the record, that is a bigger number than I’ve heard,” said Yarrow to the prospect of waiting 20 years to build his home.

Yarrow’s experience is but one sliver of the daring experiment Shire Hall embarked upon in 2020 and continues to pursue today. The County’s municipal administration convinced itself it could barter with developers to finance infrastructure needs. Shire Hall figured it could get developers to pay for it. It was a bold but ultimately reckless plan.

Reckless because Shire Hall lacks the experience, expertise or background to pull off such a bold gambit. Rather than hammer out a cautious, incremental development approach with defined benchmarks, strict financing requirements and precise developer obligations, Shire Hall shot for the moon. It would build everything all at once—$100 million worth. Caution be damned.

The plan was doomed from the outset. It was too big. The financing arrangements were too preposterous and lacked rudimentary risk analysis. No safeguards. No fallback. No safety net.

Currently, the County has agreed to spend more than $100 million in exchange for $12 million, with no assurance that it will ever get the rest of its money back. The developer has owned this land since 2006. It is entirely plausible, as Councillor Nieman observes, that it could be another 20 or 30 years before Shire Hall sees another dime—or that Wellington sees another home built.

And the kicker is: Shire Hall wants to triple down on its bet—it wants to spend $300 million to run water to Picton. Isn’t it time we took the dice from their trembling hands?

rick@wellingtontimes.ca