Winnipeg council to vote on putting $40-million gas tax top-up to residential streets
Mayor says roads get his votes, need plan in place for construction season
Winnipeg city council will vote on at least one motion that calls for putting the additional funds the federal government is flowing to Winnipeg this year towards restoring a gutted residential-streets budget this year.
And at an industry-business group breakfast Thursday, Mayor Brian Bowman said his vote will go toward reinstating the local streets program.
Councillors on the Infrastructure Renewal and Public Works Committee voted on April 2 to put the $44 million Winnipeg will receive this year (once the federal government passes its own budget) toward residential streets and active transportation. In late March, the federal budget announced Ottawa is “topping up” the gas tax fund dollars that flow to municipalities, doubling what they received in 2018.
In Manitoba, municipalities will receive in total $72 million. The funds must be used for infrastructure, which Ottawa has broadly defined to include broadband connectivity, sport and recreation and community “capacity building.”
But Bowman told the MHCA’s Breakfast with the Leaders Thursday morning, he knows where his vote is going, when the motion is on the floor.
“Roads is primarily what I’d like to see it used for.”
Executive Policy Committee next meets April 9, and City Council on April 25.
City Council approved its budget March 20. The budget eliminated all significant residential street work in 2019 – 53 streets and 11 lanes. Industrial roads and thin bituminous overlay projects will go ahead.
The gutting of the residential-streets budget was triggered by a funding dispute between the city and province: The city says the province has not paid it $40 million in its commitment to flow $50 million in 2018, the last of a five-year roads agreement. Further, the province has refused to renew that agreement, which means Winnipeg’s five-year forecast for local and regional street renewal is now $174 million short.
Meanwhile, at the breakfast, Bowman also addressed why City Council has decided to make bridges eligible for funding out of the local and regional street renewal reserve. That reserve holds the funds raised by an annual 2% tax on property owners; the tax was implemented to be dedicated to getting out of the investment deficits specifically on streets.
Bowman said there are more projects requiring funding sources than revenues at present.
MHCA has requested that City Council be provided an administrative report on the financial implications of this change to the original tax-hike deal for streets. MHCA President Chris Lorenc has pointed out that any one year of bridge work – extraordinary expensive projects – can eat up the entire local and regional street budget.
“This is not what Winnipeggers were told when the annual, dedicated street tax was implemented in 2013 and 2014,” Lorenc said. “This can derail, entirely, the strategy to addressing what is a $2-billion deficit in street work.”
