The Wellington Times article “Building Blocks”, Sept 17, 2025.
The article praises Shire Hall’s “new leadership” and their supposedly more rational, transparent approach to waterworks and growth management. Here are some flaws and gaps in the assumptions the piece makes:
1. Overconfidence in ‘new leadership’
- The article assumes that a change in leadership automatically means better decisions on growth and water infrastructure.
- In practice, councillors still face the same structural limitations: small customer base, huge capital costs, provincial mandates for full-cost recovery, and limited access to provincial/federal grants.
- Without a fundamental policy shift (like demanding provincial/federal cost sharing), “new leadership” alone won’t solve the affordability crisis.
2. Simplistic view of “use it or lose it”
- The article points to past mistakes in Wellington, where capacity was tied up by a developer but not used, and suggests new leadership will enforce stricter “use it or lose it” rules.
- In reality, capacity allocation is not just a policy choice: it’s also a financing and engineering problem. Even with revocation clauses, PEC still bears the sunk cost of planning and maintaining underused infrastructure.
- Simply reclaiming allocations doesn’t reduce the debt or operational overhead already incurred.
3. Assumption that incremental fixes will work
- The piece implies that “step by step” planning will resolve water capacity and growth issues.
- But scale is the real problem: with projects like Base31 proposing 8,000 units (in a town of 3,000), no incremental adjustment will match that demand without extraordinary capital spending.
- The article sidesteps the mismatch between massive growth approvals and PEC’s financial capacity.
4. Ignoring cost to residents
- While it notes that infrastructure needs are high, the article doesn’t grapple with how costs will actually land on residents.
- Residents already pay the highest water rates in Ontario (~$2,100 annually vs. ~$1,200 in Belleville/Kingston). Expansions like Wellington’s $100M water plant could push bills past $3,000/year.
- This affordability risk is left out, replaced by a vague confidence that “new leadership won’t make the same mistakes.”
5. Blind spot on property taxes
- The article treats water/wastewater planning in isolation, ignoring the broader financial context.
- With property taxes already up nearly 9% in 2024, households are facing a double hit: rising water bills + rising property taxes.
- The piece assumes infrastructure expansion is manageable, without asking how residents will pay for it alongside other municipal obligations (roads, healthcare pressures, housing affordability).
6. Failure to question demand projections
- It takes population growth and development pressures as given.
- But PEC’s long-term sustainability requires questioning whether approving subdivisions of the Base31 scale is wise in a municipality that struggles to maintain current assets.
- The article does not ask whether council should cap or phase growth to align with infrastructure realities.
7. Lack of transparency on developer influence
- The piece doesn’t mention the central issue of developer lobbying, or the absence of a lobbyist registry.
- Discussions involving millions in water/wastewater capacity allocations are happening, yet residents have no visibility.
- Without transparency, the “new leadership” narrative risks being just as compromised as the old.
✅ Bottom line:
The article’s biggest flaw is that it confuses process improvements (“rational,” “transparent”) with real solutions. It glosses over:
- the scale mismatch between growth approvals and capacity,
- the financial burden on residents in water rates and taxes, and
- the need for structural changes (outside funding, transparency reforms, and possibly curbing growth approvals).