Pick one:
- Decades of property tax freezes and decreases resulting in us now having the lowest municipal property taxes out of any major city in Canada; or
- An Acceptable level of public goods and services with libraries in every neighborhood
You simply cannot have both. For decades, at least at the city level, Winnipeggers have chosen fiscal austerity and a decrease in the accepted standard of public goods and services in return for zero or marginal property tax increases. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Also, the city does not have a budget of almost $2 billion - that is the consolidated number which includes utilities and operating agencies which function more like businesses and are separate entities from the tax-supported side of municipal finances. The actual tax-supported budget, that funds things like roads, police, fire, recreation, and libraries is around $1.1 billion.
You get what you pay for. Don't like it? Write your city councilor and ask them to raise our property taxes.
Fun fact: if Winnipeg raised it's property taxes at the rate of local CPI inflation since 1997 instead of freezing it or decreasing it, we would have over $100 million extra in tax revenue annually, which would have totaled around $2 billion over the past 20 years. Think of all those things $2 billion would have purchased during that time, including 3 additional legs of rapid transit, a fully grade-separated ring road, and many community centres, police stations, and fire halls. Under this scheme, the average municipal bill would now be around $1,900 per year, roughly $130 more than the current of $1,770 per year.
Instead, everyone around here is so keen on saving $130 a year that any politician who promises to freeze taxes yet another 4 years immediately gets the vote. Talk about a backwards-thinking city.