After a year still hit by COVID-19 and a blizzard draining millions from city coffers, the chair of the city’s finance committee said Winnipeggers shouldn’t get their hopes up too high ahead of Wednesday’s proposed city budget.
“It would be nice to deliver a full basket of lots of new fun things, but again, trying to lower people’s expectations because of the financial realities,” said the count. Jeff Brovaty.
During his campaign for mayor, Scott Gillingham pledged to increase property taxes to 3.5 percent, along with an increase in customs fees.
“I think one of the reasons a lot of people bought into this property tax increase was the expectation that it would fix a lot of issues in better times,” said Aaron Moore, associate professor and chair, University of Winnipeg political science department. Said .
“He may not want to break it in his first budget in his first year as mayor, but it will be constrained. The property tax increase may be insufficient or, at least, may still make it too difficult. Although I hope Not that he is going to increase the property tax that he promised during the election.
Other issues front of mind for Winnipeggers are crime and transit security, such as creating a new transit security force, which has been talked about recently amid increased transit security concerns.
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“There are a lot of these safety concerns about transit. There are concerns about crime and drug use in the city in general. And these are all things that are really taking a toll on the city.” Moore said.
“I think the mayor wants to address this in the budget, but I think it will be difficult for him to do so given the resources available.”
In January, Premier Heather Stephenson indicated the province would increase the amount transferred to the city, but Brovetti said there is no word on that yet.
“We’ve faced lower transit ridership, lower parking revenue and higher costs for things like fuel and labor.”
,It has been quite a challenge for all municipal governments in Manitoba and across the country to deal with these realities while trying to keep taxes as low as possible for residents.
Brovetti said some help from the federations and the province would certainly be appreciated “We are still waiting for word from the provincial government on our foundation grant. It has been frozen since 2017.
“I’m hoping that this staffing we’re seeing with the province will lead to more revenue from the province for a lot of things,” Moore said.
The city will need to ensure that the rainy day fund is replenished and its spending is monitored.
“They’ll need to put some money into it because if they don’t and at the end of the year, we’re running a loss, which makes things very difficult in the next year because legally you can’t run if you’re a city.” Municipal then operating deficit,” Moore said.
The budget will be presented at around 2 pm on Wednesday.
, With files from Rosanna Hempel of Global
