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Trust us
It’s a question of confidence. It took more than a century for Wellington’s population to double to 2,000 people. How confident are you that it will double again in the next nine years? Or 30 years? How confident are you that Shire Hall knows?
If you pay a water bill in Prince Edward County—in Picton, Rossmore or Carrying Place—you are on the hook to repay $100 million for new and bigger waterworks in Wellington. How confident are you that if we build it, they will come?
If only this were the total of Shire Hall’s ambitions. Plans are underfoot to run a big water pipe from Wellington through Bloomfield into Picton— likely adding many tens of millions of dollars of debt onto the backs of water customers in the County.
There may be sound reasons for Picton to take its water from another source than the shallow and vulnerable bay. But it is a massive undertaking—much too big for the 6,000 customers of the utility to bear. Waterworks in Ontario is a fully user-pay system. Customers pay all the bills—debt, operations and capital expenditures—all of it. Shire Hall is making big plans and placing big bets with your money—your water bills.
In fairness, Shire Hall has devised a novel mechanism to extract payments from developers upfront—but this arrangement has yet to produce results, or revenue, in Wellington. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are being plowed into the ground—a new water tower, an overflow tank, and new pipes buried under the Millennium Trail— assuming the revenue will materialize. It is asking for a leap of faith from the customers of this utility. Trust us, they say.
Mayor Steve Ferguson says your concerns and worries are based on “misconceptions” fuelled by “half-truths, hearsay and exaggeration,”—mainly from this corner.
His response is to assemble the consultants. So on August 31, the experts will be summoned to Wellington to set us straight.
To be clear, this isn’t a meeting to hear your questions. Your concerns. Your worries. This won’t be an exchange of views. It is designed to be a one-way conversation. The consultants—on behalf of Shire Hall—will present their work and conclusions.
From the Shire Hall release, “The upcoming PIC [public information centre] provides an opportunity for the public to refamiliarize [itself with] the findings of both the MSP and the DC Study.”
(The MSP or Master Servicing Plan is the blueprint for spending $100 million on Wellington waterworks, the DC Study (development charges) takes the $100 million and divides it between new development and existing users, allocating who will pay for what.)
So, you see, the problem isn’t in Shire Hall—it’s you and me. The solution is to reeducate us.
But none of these consultants has adequately explained how Shire Hall arrived at a quadrupling of Wellington’s population as an ambition for this community. Neither residents of Wellington nor County waterworks customers were ever asked if they consider this expectation reasonable, whether the timeline makes sense, or what happens if none of it happens. Or—and this is a big one—whether it is an outcome anyone wants.
For the entire house of cards is built on this assumption. The experts will confirm that their plans and projections are built on the idea that Wellington will grow to become the largest town in the County in the next few decades. It is built on wild and unrelenting growth—thousands of new residents, a million square feet of new commercial—and soon.
If it doesn’t happen, the whole enterprise falls apart. You will be left to pay the bill. None of it works without a massive and imminent influx of new homeowners. Does it make sense to you? Are you confident it will happen?
So bring out the experts on August 31, but your job Mayor Ferguson is to assure this community and all waterworks customers in Prince Edward County that you know the future—that you know the masses are coming. And soon. For it is our affordability—and our community—at stake in your crystal ball.
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