Unravelling

If you are a waterworks customer in Prince Edward County, you need to know what-in-the-fresh-hell is going on in Wellington. The waterworks utility has just taken the first few steps toward the realization of a $100 million megaproject in this village, and already costs are ballooning. Meanwhile, one of the key funding sources has just walked away from the table. No sod has yet been turned, nor a pipe purchased, but the Wellington waterworks spectacle is beginning to unravel. If it goes sour, consumers are on the hook to pay the escalating bill. We need better answers. Now.

A new water tower was supposed to cost $6.5 million. That estimate was produced by the County’s engineering consultant just last May. When the bids were opened earlier this month, however, the cost was $10.1 million— a staggering 55 per cent miss. Not even close.

Sensing this wasn’t going to fly—Shire Hall sat down with the contractor to find a way to lower the price. Twenty-six changes later, the price is now $8.7 million. Better, but still 33 per cent more than the estimate we paid for, and consumers were told, just last May.

But here is the peculiar bit: County staff said they anticipated the price might be high because there was only one bidder— just one contractor specializing in building water towers in the region. Okay, but if there is just a single seller of such structures, how did the engineers get the price so wrong? Shouldn’t they have known what other communities were paying for these things? Why didn’t we ask them?

What else have they gotten wrong? What does this mistake tell us about this project’s estimated $100 million cost? Given what we know now, isn’t $133 million a more likely price tag? Or is it higher? You may remember that the first estimate for the water treatment plant in Picton was $16 million. It eventually cost waterworks customers in excess of $32 million.

These aren’t inconsequential questions.

These numbers underpin our water rates. They were fed into the spreadsheet that propelled big rate hikes for water and wastewater over the next five years. Are they already off by a third? Should we get Andrew Grunda, an economics consultant, to come back and rerun the numbers? Or the engineering firm? Or both? Can there be any lingering faith that the numbers sold to us last summer can be relied upon? We are in a swamp and sinking fast.

More bad news came last week when one of the developers planning a subdivision in Wellington pulled out. The circumstances are murky, but the immediate prospect for this project, of about 200 homes, seems dead—at least for now.

This matters because Shire Hall was counting on developers to fund the bulk of the waterworks megaproject upfront. That was the deal marketed to waterworks customers— that four homebuilders wouldoffer up development charges in advance in exchange for….

Well, the truth is that we don’t know what trade-offs were made on our behalf. We have never been shown the agreements. Despite the fact that waterworks customers are on the financial hook, we have no visibility into what the County has agreed to with developers. We are partners to this agreement, yet we remain in the dark.

Now, one of the four has walked away. There may be good, solid reasons for playing hardball—and I don’t mean to secondguess tough negotiating in the background, particularly as it relates to the creation of new neighbourhoods and new housing in our community. But way too much of this has been done in the shadows—out of sight.

On Monday, Shire Hall spokesperson Mark Kerr responded to The Times inquiries saying this developer was not part of the upfront financing agreement. The answer spawns more questions: Who’s left? How much have they committed? What are the terms? The trade-offs?

Our guardians in this to-and-fro are 14 council members—most of whom have no dog in this fight. Only a handful of council members are customers of the waterworks utility, and only one is in Wellington. Most have their own wells and septic systems to worry about. It is hard to see why Council would care about our water bills or that the big-spending project in Wellington is beginning to look rickety.

We need a reckoning. Before this project takes another step. We need solid estimates of costs. We need to see who is funding what. And how much? When? We need to know the general contours of the deal. What are we trading away for this upfront payment of development charges?

Decisions are being made that will shape this community for decades—yet we remain in the dark. We bear all the risk—financial, environmental, and societal—yet we have no idea what we are agreeing to.

You wouldn’t tolerate this in your household. You wouldn’t push ahead with an upgrade to your home without knowing with some certainty what it would cost or how you were going to pay for it. Yet this is precisely what Shire Hall is asking waterworks customers to do. We own this utility—consumers fund it entirely. We are liable for all its debts and operating costs.

We demand a seat at the table. We are partners in this arrangement; treat us as such.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca