A budget built for re-election

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2016 (3023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a draft city budget tabled by a mayor who’s looking two years down the road at re-election. On Tuesday, Brian Bowman and finance committee chairman Scott Gillingham revealed the spending plans for the city in 2017 and it was all kind of — well — beige.

Property taxes going up by 2.33 per cent. No frontage fees. No new fees, and increases to existing fees tied to inflation. More money for roads. Less business taxes. An emphasis on safe and secure communities and innovation.

This is a political strategist’s list of things to do.

What’s really missing is a reason to be excited about the city. Yes, the budget is “fiscally prudent and responsible” to quote the mayor. Yes, Winnipeg has some of the lowest operating costs per capita across major cities. Yes, Winnipeg has the lowest budgeted rate of growth in tax-supported spending in 10 years. But one wonders what would happen if the city had envisioned a bit more of a bold statement?

Hike property taxes just a tad more, but ensure boulevards are mowed. Keep up frontage levies, but don’t expect citizens to rake the leaves out of the sewage drains to keep them clear. Keep the business tax where it is (instead moving it from 5.30 to 5.25 per cent) and actually have buses that work and run on time. By all means, increase the money available for fixing the roads, but then fix them. And not in dribs and drabs, shutting down major arteries for days, weeks, months at a time, but by mandating crews work longer than nine to five.

There are no new major capital projects announced for 2017, setting the scene for some goodies to be given away in 2018. Meanwhile, long promised projects such as the Tache Promenade and a new library for Transcona and a recreation facility for South Winnipeg were also provided some funding.

There were also some cuts too but not major ones: $1 million to libraries taken from tech upgrades and building refurbishments; $600,000 cuts to recreation facilities and $2 million in deferred fire paramedic station maintenance.

Perhaps prudent and responsible was necessary because of the beating council took with the business community over the implementation of growth fees. Those fees by the way aren’t figured into the draft budget because they’re not expected to really have an effect until 2018, again so we’re told. But prudent and responsible may also be pound-wise and penny-foolish. There’s $9.5 million in project deferrals that are likely going to end up costing more when the work is actually done.

At this point, there are still some pretty big elephants in the city council room: budgets for police and fire, including paramedics. Overtime costs remain an issue and the police pension caused problems with the 2016 budget. Plus contracts for both unions are expiring at the end of the year and a wage increase above inflation is not unlikely.

In the end, this is a budget that isn’t particularly visionary and not particularly scary. But it’s also a draft budget that can act as a prequel to re-election for an ambitious mayor and council.