Small, rural communities are staring “The Pickle” in the face: fewer people paying more for declining services. Most rural communities will face crisis. In an era when we don’t trust government and elected officials run on “hold the line on taxes” based on the perceived nobleness of building a wall against the big bad tax wolf huffing and puffing at the gates, we conveniently cover over infrastructure re-investment deficit. In a world of short-term perspective politics, it’s convenient political pickings.

And why not? We don’t see 80% of infrastructure in our day to day lives – the pipes underground or the sewage lagoon or the fire truck…until we desperately need it. Out of sight out of mind we rationalize. No one will see the value of our struggle to re-invest. Until you visit a community, like I did, where the paved-gravel roads looked like swiss cheese of band-aid patching of pipe leaks. Or unless you have some sarcastic fun with out of sight out of mind like I did with an Elkford BC ad moons ago:

In some work I was involved with for a group of rural communities, average annual re-investment in infrastructure was estimated at 80-140% of total municipal budgets depending on the community…for a single line item that doesn’t presently exist. It’s not sustainable.

We don’t even fully understand the challenge.

Let’s take the noble fire hydrant – just one little piece of infrastructure. While being endlessly interesting to the lives of dogs, communities account for them (it will change with emerging provincial requirements but we’re not there yet) as a “tangible capital asset.” It’s value is what was paid for it at the time of construction. Today’s fire hydrant at $3900 replacement cost (Src: www.internationalsafety.com) might be recognized by as little as $70 on the books for a turn of the century hydrant (Src: https://www.alfpd.org/2159/History). If you want to get freaked out by the magnitude of the resulting financial challenge gap, look at the City of Calgary’s map of fire hydrant locations (http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Pages/Water-and-wastewater-systems/Fire-Hydrants.aspx). For rural communities in particular there’s not much room to re-invest. Debt limits aren’t bad but there’s not much room to borrow by law. Tax and utility rates are generally high. The remaining value of tangible capital assets is red-lining below 30% of original cost.

In short, we are passing on the exponentially greater challenge we create from our infrastructure rot to inheritance of a future generation that has global options with respect to where they live. Spring substantial costs onto taxpayers in future and people won’t want to invest or live in your community. Meanwhile we have a paradox messing up everything: be cost competitive but provide for the enhanced level of service and amenities folks have come to expect in more urban environments.

It’s only natural to fight for what we have known, particularly in rural communities. We still want the arena, a fire hall, a library, and on it goes. If we are so inspired by the movie Top Gun, our community ego is writing checks our community body can’t cash.

It’s not possible to have it all. We are starving our future for our pickling of the romance of the past we used to live in our communities – when the golden sun set on our prideful community hockey team.

The past is not the future. We need to think in different ways about the future. For many communities, not only is prosperity at stake, viability is at stake.

First is an issue of public mindset. While we consider taxes to be bad, and investment to be good, for municipalities are the same thing. We all own the infrastructure where we live. We need to re-invest in its health, like we would a newly shingled roof to fix the leaks, or painting of the baseboards to fix the dings. We have an individual house to maintain. We have a bigger community house to maintain.

Related, as a community you need to be prepared to re-invest. In a previous life I worked at the Town of Okotoks, which became one of first municipalities in Alberta if not Canada to institute a recapitalization levy in the 1990s.

Second, we need to re-imagine infrastructure.

• Can we adjust lower infrastructure standards to design a new cost environment?
• Can we share things like arenas with adjacent municipalities? Or take it a step further and collaborate more deeply on shared services or even amalgamate to generate better orientation to the future?
• What does innovation have to say about costs and re-investment?
• How can we understand infrastructure investment and re-investment in context of shifting demographic and their changing needs? While seniors love pickleball, families love pools. While a middle-age demographic may love bungalows, millennials and young families need new forms of lifestyle-priced housing innovation options.
• Can we plan prudently for focused investments – and all-important differentiation of investments for purpose of attracting the next generation – amidst static population or population decline?
• Facetiously, do we need to think creatively “cash cow” like Toronto, with a single fire hydrant that generated $300K in parking fines between 2008 and 2014 (Src: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commuting/this-fire-hydrant-cost-toronto-drivers-nearly-300000-in-parking-tickets/article19985642/).
• Or do we need to get far more aggressive with our economic development future to be able to re-capitalize our future?

Ah – and let’s make it more complicated. Never forget that your brand is built on your originality, not your role as a basic services provider. You have to excel at basic services but that makes you like most other communities. Your exceptionalism comes from that foundation PLUS the elements of distinct memorability you create – be it sculpture park or entertainment destination. So while you tackle your under-carriage, you need to think more creatively than ever about your over-carriage – the 10% of what you do that makes you unique, compelling, and worth visiting or investing in.

What doesn’t work is the ostrich in the sand approach. Or presuming we can pickle our past to stem the tide against a future of accelerating change.

Make a wise expenditure to study the challenge. Identify the roadmap. Invest in the roadmap. Get started today.

If you need some help, there’s no better asset management evangelist than Christina Benty, former Mayor of Town of Golden and consultant. (www.christinabenty.com)