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The art of persuasion
Buy today and don’t pay a cent for 24 months.’ It’s a pitch that moves furniture. And municipal budgets.
budgets. In either case, it is unlikely the buyer’s prospects will have improved much in two years. It is equally unlikely they will have put money aside in the intervening months. The sales technique works because it relies on folks making a commitment today they have no business making. It relies on the expectation that the future will be better than today. But more likely, such buying decisions help ensure it isn’t. Instant gratification comes with consequences only felt in the hazy, unshaped future.
Earlier this year, the new term of council was persuaded it deserved better roads and could have them if—like Dorothy in Oz—they truly wanted them. No federal or provincial money was coming to help. No lottery ticket or inheritance. This was something that had to be done by County taxpayers alone.
To do so will require extracting $25 million more from residents each year—about $2,000 added to the average tax bill. But despite the price tag, Council could agree to the Five-Year Roads Plan, and there would be no cost this year. Payments wouldn’t start until 2024 and be phased in over five years. Council learned it could buy better roads today and pay later. It signed up.
Last week, Council agreed to endorse accelerated plans for Base31, even as the proponent explained there were few details on offer. Council was assured the planning, infrastructure, and other details would be sorted someday in the hazy, unshaped future. It enthusiastically endorsed the plan.
This week, Council will be asked to endorse a big and bold new fire plan. It will be expensive. Exactly how much we don’t know and won’t know until the budget is presented later this year. Nevertheless, Council will be asked on Thursday to support the plan.
A hike in funding for fire services will, nevertheless, be a tough sale.
Structure fires have been declining across North America for more than two decades— better detection and greater awareness of hazards have significantly reduced the risk and cost of fire. In Prince Edward County, just one in ten incidents the County’s fire department attends is actually a fire. Of this fraction, about half are structure or motor vehicle fires—fires that incur a loss of value. The remaining calls are to manage brush or burning grass.
The fire business is down. Costs, meanwhile, continue to spiral upward. So, the story has to change. It’s not so much about fighting fires anymore—it’s about mitigating risk. This means a more muscular fire service presence in our homes, businesses and community events.
The plan calls for closing fire halls (Cressy and Ameliasburgh), expanding others, tougher code enforcement, more robust public education, a dedicated radio system, enhanced dispatch services, more firefighter certification, as well as mandatory protection services at community events sponsored or sanctioned by Prince Edward County.
Community events that survived Covid are struggling. Volunteers have moved on. The village of Wellington will welcome Prince Edward County this weekend for Pumpkinfest. It is unclear whether this community event can survive the cost of another layer of protection.
Patterns are emerging. The 2024 budget looks likely to transform Prince Edward County. The sheer scale of the ambition is breathtaking. Roads. Waterworks. Long-term care. All require capital expenditures starting in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shire Hall has its pitch together—it is talking features and benefits. The customer is listening. Hopeful. Eager for solutions. From here, it is just a matter of closing the deal.
In fairness, Shire Hall is trying to solve problems. It is trying to fix things that have festered for a long time. But this isn’t how to do it. Persuading Council to buy things its residents can’t afford is not a solution.
It wasn’t guile or a lack of will that precluded such choices in the past. It was a lack of money on the scale required to address these challenges.
It is not as though previous councils didn’t throw money at its problems. The tax levy and user fees collected from residents have increased five times in two and a half decades. The population, meanwhile, has remained flat. In doing so, successive councils have ensured that only wealthy folks could live here. It has pushed others out. Has spending all this money made Prince Edward County a better place?
Well, we are here now. Shall we mortgage our future so fantastically that only the uber-wealthy can stay or aspire to live here? Will Council craft ever more elaborate distribution schemes to mask the structural changes they are making to this place? Or will the promised population boom pay for the commitments Council is making?
There are trade-offs in any policy decision. Council must resist the allure of buying now and paying later.
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