Winnipeg Construction X

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Originally Posted by Labroco

Poplar and Birch not a great choice... Oak would work.

Birch seems to be on the list, though experimental. I was thinking Poplar as it grows really fast and really tall. And their leaves are perfect in a summer breeze.

[buzzg]

I think the city actually needs to NOT commit to a species on a street. Plant a mix - the disease problem is partially due to mono species environments. If an elm got DED but there were other species next to it, it wouldn’t spread to more trees.

This convo about preservation is the fatal flaw of the mayor’s million tree program. Sure it’s good in theory, but it’s giving up on saving existing mature trees in favour of Just planting new ones because it’s cheaper. Issue is it doesn’t factor in the fact you’re just writing off 50+ years of growth, which has numerous benefits: financial, environmental, and emotional. And contrary to many believes, “emotional” has real tangible value. The attractiveness and beauty of a city has direct implications on how many people move to, leave, and visit a city. Tourism Winnipeg actively promotes Winnipeg’s tree canopy as an asset.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by buzzg

I think the city actually needs to NOT commit to a species on a street. Plant a mix - the disease problem is partially due to mono species environments. If an elm got DED but there were other species next to it, it wouldn’t spread to more trees.

.

That is the city's plan.

My block in East Kildonan had about 7 or 8 trees planted about 5 or 6 years ago to replace trees that have needed to be cut down for various reasons and the planted ones were all a mix of different species.

Unfortunately one of the newly planted ones in front of my house has died, and after calling 311 I got a voice mail saying the tree was inspected and urban forestry dept is scheduled to come out (no time frame given) and remove it and I'm guessing eventually replace it with another tree.

From what I can see online urban forestry dept expects about 25% of the newly planted trees not to make it through the first 3 years of life after planting.

[oftheMoon]

The city replanted a couple dozen trees on boulevards and in Stephen Juba Park this spring/early summer in East Exchange but failed to water them well enough. About 25% of them are already dead including a lovely little Oak in the park...

[trueviking]

I’m fine with a mix of trees but I think all boulevard trees should be broad canopy shade trees. Oak. Elm. Basswood. Cottonwood. The vast majority of trees we use aren’t even in the large tree category. Delta Hackberry appears to be the biggest we plant. The next generations are going to be pissed when they realize we planted them a bunch of stubby little trees. I came across Amur Maple replacing Elms in Crescentwood. That’s barely more than a shrub.

I also think a mix can be designed. Could even be by street or neighbourhood. Would be nice to have different canopies over different streets.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Let's play "if you were a city councilor"

It is budget time and you have to pick one of the following choices:

- reduce the snow clearing budget
- cut transit funding
- have fewer police officers
- close the fire station in your ward
- sell the popular park in your ward to a developer
- close the public pool in your ward
- gut the tree maintenance budget.

Yeah. I’ll take. Reduce the pothole filling budget for 100 Alex.

The ONLY line item to see huge increases in a budget that cut almost everything was potholes. A 2/3 increase by the third year. Could just keep it the same and have $60 million in one year to spend on all those things.

A proper tree maintenance and planting budget would be a few million dollars more. Pittance in a billion dollar budget. The city doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a priorities problem.

[Spocket]

Originally Posted by Hecate

Cut the police budget... No reason for constables to be making over $100,000 a year in a province whose average annual household Income is less than $70,000

Better they get overpaid than people who kick or carry a ball around. Not that I think the cops are overpaid either way but between Canadian cops and your average pro sports player, I know which one has more value to society and which one is actually overpaid.

[trueviking]

Wait. You want the Jets to play for trees?

Or do you mean Bomber players? Currently making zero dollars per year and if they ever return make about half what a 28 year old cop does? With no pension and an average career of three years?

Or do you mean the Goldeyes? Because they make like $500 a week.

[trueviking]

Not to get into it, but NHL hockey players are the best 500 people at their job in the world. If you took the best 500 people from any profession, they would be very wealthy.

The players are payed by us. We choose to pay them what they do. If we thought they had no value to us we wouldn’t pay and they wouldn’t make what they do.

Pretty rare 15,000 pay $100 to watch a few cops do their job.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by trueviking

The city doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a priorities problem.

No, it has both. It's just that the current Mayor's only successful initiative has been the road renewal program. Engineering studies on the city's roadway network indicate that the entire network needs roughly $110 to $130 million per year to bring it up to acceptable standards and maintain it into perpetuity. The previous Mayor drew down the road network spending to a historical low of $30 million near the end of his term, which meant that the city needed to increase annual revenues going directly towards roads by $100 million annually, hence the 2% property tax increases dedicated to roads for 8 years.

This is literally the only successful problem our elected officials have been able to solve. Everything else at the city, from downtown safety to transit to forestry needs more money, but our politicians don't have the balls to raise the revenue required for those programs because they don't buy votes.

In a political environment where everyone feels like they are being highly taxed, politicians decided to choose ONE issue to focus on, which so happened to be roads. And they've done well at it - municipal benchmarking reports show that our roads are in the second best condition in the country, only behind Calgary. But the result is that everything else that needs help such as transit and recreation are falling behind quicker and quicker.

The math shows that if we chose to fund all services adequately so as to address infrastructure deficit needs, we'd likely need 6% to 8% annual property tax increases for the next decade or so. And guess what? Cities do it. Vancouver increased property taxes by 7% this year, Calgary increased theirs by 8.9%, and Toronto increased theirs by 4.24%. In Winnipeg? The same old 2.33%. Why? Because elected officials hear from the public that we simply don't value the municipal public goods and services the city provides, so voters would rather "starve the beast" than see services improve.

In 10 years, Winnipeg's roads will be in the best condition in North America, but it will come at the cost of everything else. A dead tree canopy, demolished and shuttered community centers, an unsafe downtown, overgrown parks, and uncut boulevards. But hey, no more potholes! Is that the city the average Winnipegger wants to live in? Because that sure is what they are communicating to Mayor and Council.

[pspeid]

[QUOTE=Winnipegger;9015336]

In a political environment where everyone feels like they are being highly taxed, politicians decided to choose ONE issue to focus on, which so happened to be roads.QUOTE]

I think there are good points here, especially this one. The public's perception of issues seems to be rarely challenged by the political leadership, and if it is, it seems to do so ineffectively.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

No, it has both. It's just that the current Mayor's only successful initiative has been the road renewal program. Engineering studies on the city's roadway network indicate that the entire network needs roughly $110 to $130 million per year to bring it up to acceptable standards and maintain it into perpetuity. The previous Mayor drew down the road network spending to a historical low of $30 million near the end of his term, which meant that the city needed to increase annual revenues going directly towards roads by $100 million annually, hence the 2% property tax increases dedicated to roads for 8 years.

This is literally the only successful problem our elected officials have been able to solve. Everything else at the city, from downtown safety to transit to forestry needs more money, but our politicians don't have the balls to raise the revenue required for those programs because they don't buy votes.

In a political environment where everyone feels like they are being highly taxed, politicians decided to choose ONE issue to focus on, which so happened to be roads. And they've done well at it - municipal benchmarking reports show that our roads are in the second best condition in the country, only behind Calgary. But the result is that everything else that needs help such as transit and recreation are falling behind quicker and quicker.

The math shows that if we chose to fund all services adequately so as to address infrastructure deficit needs, we'd likely need 6% to 8% annual property tax increases for the next decade or so. And guess what? Cities do it. Vancouver increased property taxes by 7% this year, Calgary increased theirs by 8.9%, and Toronto increased theirs by 4.24%. In Winnipeg? The same old 2.33%. Why? Because elected officials hear from the public that we simply don't value the municipal public goods and services the city provides, so voters would rather "starve the beast" than see services improve.

Calgary increased taxes by almost 9%? I hadn't heard this about Toronto either ... up until now Toronto has had exactly the same sort of policy that Winnipeg has.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Calgary increased taxes by almost 9%? I hadn't heard this about Toronto either ... up until now Toronto has had exactly the same sort of policy that Winnipeg has.

Yep, an 8.9% increase for the average homeowner, on the municipal side (excluding education). Source here: https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/latest-pr...ners-1.4836403

The primary issue in Calgary is that during the height of the oil boom, they were drawing a ton of tax from downtown offices. With the severe decline in energy prices and emptying of downtown offices, they've had to increase the burden on homeowners to make up for declines in downtown property tax revenue.

In Winnipeg, non-res only accounts for about 35% of overall tax revenue (property + business), so homeowners shoulder 65% of the tax burden here. That's common across prairie cities though, likely due to conservative "pro-business" mindset.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Let's play "if you were a city councilor"

It is budget time and you have to pick one of the following choices:

- reduce the snow clearing budget
- cut transit funding
- have fewer police officers
- close the fire station in your ward
- sell the popular park in your ward to a developer
- close the public pool in your ward
- gut the tree maintenance budget.

Without question for me:

1) Reduce police budget
2) Reduce snow clearing budget (most cities don't clear residential sidewalks)
3) Cancel the ridiculous plan to actively replace all the signage in the city with bilingual signs (regardless of condition/age) and instead just put new bilingual signs in as they need replacing.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Without question for me:

1) Reduce police budget
2) Reduce snow clearing budget (most cities don't clear residential sidewalks)
3) Cancel the ridiculous plan to actively replace all the signage in the city with bilingual signs (regardless of condition/age) and instead just put new bilingual signs in as they need replacing.

Reducing the police budget without getting rid of actual officers would be next to impossible, and would be challenging during a time when downtown crime is being percieved as getting more severe. I'm not debating whether or not the number of officers impact crime since police respond to crimes, and don't really prevent crimes, but it's an issue nonetheless.

It is my understanding that the sidewalk snow clearing budget is marginal - perhaps $300k per "major storm". While it is true that this is a premium service not offered in other cities, cutting it is hardly the silver bullet to budget woes. Perhaps you cut sidewalk snow clearing and can hire 5 more police officers. This action would cost you a lot of votes for the reduced snow clearing service and wouldn't have much of an impact on crime if at all.

[buzzg]

Yeah I would definitely cut the number of officers, as it's been proven it's not directly correlated to crime levels. It's also often the patrol teams acting as first responders downtown then the cops eventually show up, arrest people, and do nothing to help them long term.

And interesting to know about sidewalk snow clearing. Seems remarkably low. My sidewalk is cleared several times every winter yet last year the street only got cleared once, and didn't get cleared at all in winter 18/19.

[bomberjet]

I'm not anti-poilce. But the cost is out of control and it's 100% due to the union. There is no debate. And it's directly linked to the unions position on political figures. They endorse candidate X, just like the other unions. And then reap the rewards when candidate X is elected.

"X is tough on crime, elect them and they will make you safe." Then increasing police budgets is seen as X just keeping election promises. And here we are.

Most recently they have been anti Bowman. And then Bowman has been trying to reign in there costs for good reason.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I'm not anti-poilce. But the cost is out of control and it's 100% due to the union. There is no debate. And it's directly linked to the unions position on political figures. They endorse candidate X, just like the other unions. And then reap the rewards when candidate X is elected.

"X is tough on crime, elect them and they will make you safe." Then increasing police budgets is seen as X just keeping election promises. And here we are.

Most recently they have been anti Bowman. And then Bowman has been trying to reign in there costs for good reason.

Bang on, it’s not just the police service, it’s firefighters, nurses, teachers all with strong unions getting more for their members than they are actually worth. Not saying they all don’t do valuable jobs but so do a lot of other professions and are not rewarded in the same way!

City Councillor Klein is the biggest suck up to the WPS and WFPS unions and with their help got him elected!

The WPS and WFPS salaries are completely out of line based on median income in this city, those unions always comparing salaries to Vancouver and Toronto (where the cost of living dwarfs Winnipeg’s) With salary negotiations is ridiculous and our clueless mayor and council always cave!

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Nice rant. It's the WPS and the WFPS that take 47+% of the city budget.

That's the argument and the issue. And don't think I'm coming after anyone. I'm not. It's about the cash and 2.33 % property tax isn't going to do the job. Not if you want anything else done.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by OTA in Winnipeg

Nice rant. It's the WPS and the WFPS that take 47+% of the city budget.

That's the argument and the issue. And don't think I'm coming after anyone. I'm not. It's about the cash and 2.33 % property tax isn't going to do the job. Not if you want anything else done.

Think about this, the majority of WPS and WFPS members are all making in excess of $100K (along with gold plated pensions and benefits) and they still have unions clawing for as much as they can greedily get, continually advertising along with constant PR to further their cause, more is never enough for these guys!

I’m the last guy to agree with “defund the police” but maybe there is merit to it, maybe social services can do a better job and for less!