Loney promises ‘big-city transit,’ Gillingham defends tax, frontage-fee hikes in costed mayoral platforms

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This article was published 10/10/2022 (806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayoral candidate Shaun Loney would raise property taxes by 3.7 per cent next year, then work to introduce a “retooled impact fee” and a 25-cent daily charge on parking spaces in the future.

Loney said he’d also test out a “distance-based” user fee that would be charged to drivers, based on how many kilometres they drive.

In a costed platform released Tuesday, the candidate said Winnipeg should stop “doubling down on car culture.”

“One of the reasons why we’re struggling is because we’ve built a great city for cars. Other cities are moving rapidly towards thinking about moving people and goods around (in other ways) and we’ll find when we do that we’re going to have more infill (homes built in existing neighbourhoods). We’re going to have a big-city transit system,” he said.

Loney is also proposing a $100,000 pilot project to test distance-based user fees, which he said could replace multiple provincial and federal fuel taxes.

“(It) would just charge people a per cent (rate per) kilometre fee (based) on how much they’ve driven in the year. The more you drive, the more you’d pay,” he said.

In 2024, he said he’d also like to “work with industry” on a new impact fee. The city’s previous impact fee on new homes in some new neighbourhoods was quashed in 2020. That’s when a judge ordered to city to issue refunds, deeming the fee an unconstitutional indirect tax. As of that year, it added $5,249.96 per 1,000 square feet to the price of those homes.

Despite the legal defeat, Loney said he agrees with impact-fee supporters who argue new homes don’t cover the costs they create for city services and infrastructure expansion.

“There needs to be some changes, obviously,” he said. “And the courts didn’t say that charging an impact fee is off the table, they just said the way the city (was) doing it wasn’t meeting the test of what (the) fee is supposed to be.”

Loney stressed his plan is affordable for taxpayers, arguing contender Scott Gillingham’s plan to raise property taxes by 3.5 per cent in each of the next four years and add a $1.50 per foot to the local frontage fee in 2023 is “deceptive” and “regressive.”

Loney noted the frontage fee would be charged at the same amount to all owners of equally wide lots, no matter what the value of their actual home, making it unfair for owners of more modest homes.

“I want Winnipeggers to know that Scott Gillingham is hitting them a 7.5 per cent equivalent property tax increase at a time when they’re struggling with inflation, at a time when they’re struggling with high energy prices and stagnant wages,” he said.

Loney also made a few additions to his own platform Tuesday, including a $20 million boost for active transportation funding over the next four years, $2 million more per year to increase the urban-forest budget and $1 million more for a reconciliation action plan.

Gillingham also released his costed election platform Tuesday while arguing his tax and frontage-fee hikes will fund critical investments that help Winnipeg recover from the massive economic effects of the pandemic.

“I will continue to work hard as mayor to reduce costs and make sure that we are running efficient departments but you just can’t… starve your way to growth as a city,” he said.

Two of Gillingham’s most substantial infrastructure pledges are to pursue the widening of Kenaston Boulevard (between Taylor and Ness avenues) and an extension of Chief Peguis Trail (from Main Street to Brookside Boulevard), as long as a cost-benefit analysis proves their value.

Each project is expected to cost more than $500 million, though Gillingham says both are essential to improve trade routes and grow the economy.

He rejected the idea that frontage fees place too much of a financial burden on Winnipeggers with modest homes, noting residents in that category live on smaller lots.

He said the average homeowner of a 25-foot lot would pay an additional $102 next year to cover the property tax and frontage-fee hikes he’s proposing for 2023, while the average owner of a 50-foot lot would pay about $139 more.

His campaign declined to estimate what level of property tax hike the combined levies would be equivalent to.

Gillingham’s platform also features other promises, including a plan to explore potential federal funding to study relocating city railyards, restoring a 10 per cent funding cut (about $500,000) to the Winnipeg Arts Council the city approved in 2020, and seeking new ways to support immigration (especially to attract skilled workers.)

Meanwhile, mayoral hopeful Kevin Klein says he would keep the 2.33 per cent tax hike planned for 2023, the last year in the city’s four-year budget.

During a mayoral forum last week, Klein said he would add “no new taxes until I determine specifically where the money is going and how it’s being spent.”

Since the tax hike for 2023 was previously planned in the city’s 2020 to 2023 multi-year budget, Klein said he doesn’t consider it a new tax.

“It wouldn’t benefit the city for me to (change it now). What’s more beneficial is digging deeper into the budget (in 2024),” said Klein.

Winnipeggers will elect their next mayor and council Oct. 26.

Joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga