Winnipeg, MB - Premier Greg Selinger’s budget is failing Winnipeggers and creating a crisis for municipalities said Mayor Sam Katz at a news conference this afternoon.
“This budget is not about infrastructure, despite Premier Selinger’s assurances that it is,” said Mayor Katz. “Unfortunately for residents and businesses in the City of Winnipeg, the new tax hike won’t make any difference to Winnipeg’s pothole-filled streets.”
Of the $277 million in new revenue collected from the one per cent Provincial Sales Tax (PST) increase, Winnipeg will receive only $7 million for roads, and even that money comes with conditions attached.
“More than 60 per cent of the PST collected in this province comes from within the City of Winnipeg,” said Mayor Katz. “Yet, this provincial budget completely abandons Winnipeggers. With this budget, we’ve lost any hope of receiving new, long-term funding for our streets.”
Winnipeg City Council first passed a resolution asking that the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) lobby the Province for a municipal infrastructure sales tax back in 2008.
Since then, the City and the AMM have put forward numerous proposals to address the municipal infrastructure crisis, including a 2011 request that the Province dedicate one per cent of existing PST, over and above what municipalities already receive, to municipal infrastructure. Shared among municipalities on a per capita basis, the City of Winnipeg would receive $152 million annually. To raise this revenue on its own, the City of Winnipeg would have to implement a 34 per cent property tax increase.
“Every time we put forward funding solutions for the City of Winnipeg’s infrastructure crisis, the Province has attacked them, only later to adopt these very ideas and keep the cash to subsidize their debt-ridden budgets,” said Deputy Mayor Russ Wyatt.
Municipalities rely on property taxes as their main sources of revenue, receiving a comparatively small piece of the overall tax pie. The City of Winnipeg receives only eight cents for every tax dollar collected in Winnipeg, compared to 65 cents for the Province of Manitoba and 27 cents for the Government of Canada.