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Talking to strangers
How we talk about home tends to say more about us than the place. Home is where we reside for a while. It’s the place into which we pour deep personal significance, and then we move on. It becomes someone else’s home. It changes a little along the way, but is still the same place. It is us who have changed.
Mayor Steve Ferguson and County manager Marcia Wallace recently spoke to a gaggle of potential investors and opportunity seekers at an event put on by ULI Toronto, whose mission is “to shape the built environment for transformative impact on communities worldwide.” The November event, billed as “Urban meets Rural,” showcased Prince Edward County and was hosted by Giannone Petricone Associates, Base31 and Urban Strategies Inc.
To be clear at the outset, Mayor Ferguson and CAO Wallace can meet with whomever they wish, whenever they wish. Moreover, it can only be a good thing when our leaders tell the County’s story—to share the opportunities and attributes of this place far and wide. It’s their job, and I would disappointed if they did otherwise.
But what they say matters.
Mayor Ferguson’s comments were mostly the high-level, anodyne observations that ChatGPT might produce. His insights mainly the superficial banalities offered by folks who believe this place didn’t exist until they discovered it. A bit self-deluded, perhaps, but harmless.
CAO Wallace’s comments were more concrete—more rooted in assessing the state-the-municipality for this visiting contingent. As such, they were more problematic.
Little of what Wallace said to these folks rings true. It comes off as needy. Transactional. Not from a love of the place, its past and potential, but rather a sum of its problems— a place to be fixed. To be transformed. It was not a good look.
First bullet point: Prince Edward County’s opportunity/ challenge? Rapid Growth.
Where? Averaging 150 new homes a year isn’t rapid growth. It’s roughly the same pace as the first decade of this century. No one described it as ‘rapid growth’ then. And when that wave passed, the County’s population remained roughly the same as before. The truth is that this community loses as many people as arrive here. It is expensive to live here, there are few economic opportunities, and we are old. We may not be the best candidates for “transformative impacts.”
New homebuilding—the only measure of growth in a primarily residential community— lags well behind all neighbouring jurisdictions. And has done so since 2009. If folks are looking for growth, they will love Quinte West, Belleville and Brighton.
Rapid growth is a projection by the CAO— it isn’t reality. However, seeding the notion of “rapid growth” helps to set up her main point: Infrastructure financing.
CAO Wallace has persuaded herself—and many around the council table—that the trick to rebuilding infrastructure is to get developers to pay for it. But five years later, it is clear this trick isn’t working. And won’t work.
Developers and investors have always been more agile than municipal officials, and they always will be. They will always tell you the thing you want to hear to get approval or to sell a home. Then, they build the thing that makes them the most money. On their terms. On their timeframe. (Even when it means sitting on the land for decades while generating positive capital appreciation.)
So far, this municipality has spent more than $50 million—money it doesn’t have—running ahead of the market to expand waterworks infrastructure, believing that developers would pay for it. They didn’t. And they won’t. Not in any meaningful way or reasonable timeframe.
In the CAO’s comments, developers hear weakness— plus a hint of desperation. This little municipality needs their investment dollars. It needs their influence. This place will do whatever developers want to get their attention. This place is so needy that it will discard its values, traditions, and sense of community in exchange for cash.
They see a place that can be moulded, shaped and transformed. It will be whatever developers want it to be.
That is the transaction Shire Hall, Ferguson, and Wallace have put on offer: Pimping out the place for new waterworks.
We need a new message. And a bit more pride of place.
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