Quote:
Originally Posted by Spocket
They wouldn't raise your taxes, they'd look for ways (and have done so historically) to reduce them even when it means reducing essential services. Hell, my biggest bone to pick with Katz was that he would consistently cheap out on everything whereas Murray (greatest mayor Winnipeg had in decades, in my opinion) dared to dream.
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Yes, you are correct. Our business-orientated "private sector good, public sector bad" mayors did diversify municipal revenue streams, but most municipalities, including Winnipeg, have very few options from where to derive revenues. Again, they aren't a business, they are a provider of public goods.
If the city were run as a business as opposed to a public institution, then there would be no general taxes and instead user fees for everything. Call the Police because someone is breaking in? $1000 bill. Call the Fire department because your kitchen caught fire? $750 charge to your credit card. Call 311 because the neighbors dog is barking? $50 calling fee and a $250 service call fee for animal services or a bylaw officer. Need garbage collected every week? $300 annual garbage collection fee (many cities have this). Road in front of your house has a pothole you want fixed? $1500 invoice from Maple Leaf construction. Want to head over to St. Vital or Kilcona park? $25 entry fee per person. That's how a city would "diversify" it's revenues, like a business. But no city in Canada really operates like this.
So since we, as a population, have decided that public goods should be provided based on one's ability to pay (proxied mainly through property tax) as opposed to user fees, mayors and councilors have very few options left. So what has Winnipeg done to reduce it's reliance on property tax? It increased it's reliance on government grants (which are really unstable and highly dependent on the governing political party) and increased the reliance on user fees for smaller services like recreation and programming fees. Aside from introducing new taxes, we can either charge higher fees (and that has it's limits before people simply stop using the service) or we can rely on unreliable grants from the federal and provincial governments.
The end result is that the city has chosen to keep our property taxes among the lowest of all major Canadian cities, which has resulted in a massive infrastructure deficit, pools closing, rinks not getting ice, inadequate expressways, decaying parks, busted boulevards, fields of grass not being cut, and just an overall "cheap" feel to everything public here.
That's why mayors in this City don't dream. It's impossible. There are no feasible dreams to be had in this city under the current fiscal circumstances. If the population entertained the idea of raising property taxes to bring us in line with most other major cities, then a mayor could dream. But people don't want that, they are content with paying little tax in exchange for little public goods. So what does the mayor do? He goes out and tries to implement an impact fee so that new communities pay for the infrastructure costs associated with the new growth, and what happens? All the developers push back hard (understandable as they are profit-maximizing businesses) and do all that they can to get the public on their side. All while impact fee money piles up in the bank and the City doesn't want to spend it because of a pending legal battle which also costs taxpayer dollars.
See where I'm going here? You can't blame mayors for not being visionaries in this city when there is nothing to envision. There is no money to do anything because it's all tied up in 2 service-based departments (police and fire) and trying to catch up with a $7 billion infrastructure deficit by replacing 1 bridge per decade. We won't even get a second line of BRT in the next 20 years because we are so frugal here in this province and eking out an extra $100 per year from tax payers is considered to be highway robbery in this province. And any time a politician does try to find alternative sources of funding to move this city forward, it comes with massive resistance and takes years to implement.
So no, we can't expect mayors to be visionaries or to dream if we don't give them the resources to do so.
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