Upside down

Existing water users will pay

Shire Hall staff acknowledged on Thursday that a one per cent growth rate means a much larger share of the proposed infrastructure spending (regional plant and intake in Wellington and a 20-kilometre pipeline to Picton) will be borne by existing water rate payers across Prince Edward County.

The notion of “growth paying for growth” has disappeared from the Shire Hall planning conversation. Its power as a marketing slogan was persuasive for a time, but it has withered in the light of day.

When folks imagined a surge of new homebuilding and rapid population growth in Prince Edward County just a couple of years ago, their chief argument was that development would pay the bulk (78 per cent) of the cost. Now that those lofty forecasts have come back to earth, the script has changed.

Instead, it is now clear that existing water customers across Prince Edward County will have to foot the overwhelming share of the bill—not developers.

“We’ve heard for years that growth pays for growth,” said Councillor Corey Engelsdorfer in the committee meeting on Thursday. “But according to this report, 75 per cent of the costs are paid for by existing users. It doesn’t look like growth is paying for growth.”

Cristal Laanstra, head of development services, suggested that the shift of costs to existing users was due to Picton residents benefitting from a new plant in Wellington. That is clearly incorrect in the context of the councillor’s question. Picton residents were always getting this benefit—under the old and new plans.

The difference is entirely about growth rates. Lower growth means existing users must fund a much higher proportion of the hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.

The dream of wildly surging growth rates was always about the opportunity to shift more of the cost onto development. This opportunity proved a mirage.

It will be existing users who pay.