A bright face on too little money to fix a crumbling city
By: Dan Lett
Link:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/loc...114411529.html
Posted: 01/22/2011 1:00 AM | Winnipeg Free Press
Whenever the city delivers a capital budget, it is accompanied by a cheery optimism. Lurking beneath that veneer, however, is an unmistakable sense of impending doom.
As we found out Friday, the city will spend $370 million this year fixing roads, sidewalks, bridges and upgrading water and sewer services. Parks will see enhancements and even aging gravel back lanes (we still have gravel back lanes?) will be a bit better off. It's all genuinely positive stuff. Your tax dollars at work.
The impending sense of doom comes when you realize after all that money is spent, we'll be worse off than we were at the beginning of the year. That's because $370 million is just a fraction of the more than $3 billion it is estimated we need to spend on infrastructure. Consider that the city estimates it needs to spend $170 million a year just to maintain existing regional and local streets. This year, it will spend just $42 million. That's why, after spending more than a third of a billion dollars, we're actually deeper in the glue than when we started.
Your heart has to go out to senior civic bureaucrats, who each year are asked to deliver the capital budget with a plucky "it's not enough but it's pretty good" gusto. They are consummately professional in the commission of their mission, which is not to sweat the slow, painful decay of the city, but do the best job they can with what they have. This is a job that only courageous public administrators and captains of sinking ships can fully appreciate.
It would be wrong to describe this as a case of the city whistling by the graveyard. For that to be true, the whistlers must have no sense of their own mortality as they stroll happily past the tombstones.
No, given that the city knows exactly how bad the problem is, this is more a case of quiet, dignified resignation. We're aware of the problem, and we're doing the best we can and we know it's not enough.
The city is limited in its ability to raise money, and has been stymied in its bid to get a greater share of sales taxes to attack the infrastructure deficit. So, realizing that there simply isn't enough money to do what is needed, the city does what it can. And then puts as positive a spin on it as possible.
Coun. Scott Fielding, chairman of the city's finance committee and city hall's de facto finance minister, did his best to accentuate the positive while detailing the work that would be done this year. Ditto Mayor Sam Katz who, like Fielding, began every statement by acknowledging the city is not spending enough. Even as the two men faced down reporters, however, you could tell they fully recognized the futility of their situation. It all makes for a rather macabre scene.
Imagine you've just heard a giant meteor is hurtling towards Earth, where it will destroy all humankind. Realizing there's nothing you can do, you turn off the TV, sit down to dinner and discuss where the family should go on summer holiday this year.
Is there no way out of this vicious cycle of unfounded optimism and crumbling roads? The city certainly believes a bigger a share of sales taxes is the silver bullet. And it is true that the best way to make headway is by connecting the cost of infrastructure to a growth tax. But that is not the only solution.
The city will table an operating budget next month in which it must show senior levels of government it is doing its part. Right now, the city is more interested in avoiding debt and freezing taxes than finding own-source solutions for the infrastructure deficit. The result is a city that is fiscally sound (with low debt levels and tens of millions of dollars in reserve accounts) and physically decrepit.
But this is also a city that has an operating budget based on a wing and prayer. To make matters worse, the city has sustained the property tax freeze by raiding those reserve accounts and counting unrealized revenue from long-shot lawsuits against the province. It's not hard to see why the provincial and federal governments, both of which are facing deficit crises of different magnitudes, might have little time to entertain indignant demands from the city for a larger share of sales tax revenue.
The federal and provincial governments already pay an enormous share of infrastructure costs. The city will receive more than $116 million in infrastructure money from the federal and provincial governments this year. So it's a bit disingenuous to accuse the senior levels of government of abandoning the city on this issue.
Adding a point to the provincial sales tax is very likely the solution to this problem. However, instead of constant complaints, the city should work with the province so this does not become an act of governmental hara-kiri.
And the city should do it soon. That meteor is getting closer and closer.
dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 22, 2011 B1
Prev
Linear Mode
