Provincial funding top-up for municipalities receives middling reviews from mayors
Premier announced $12.4 million for 137 municipalities, who collectively requested new funding framework
In an announcement Premier Wab Kinew described as "something that's never been done before," Manitoba's NDP government plans to top up funding for municipalities by an additional $12.4 million a year, starting in 2025.
Municipal leaders, who have been lobbying the province to overhaul the way it funds Manitoba's cities, towns and rural municipalities, say the new funding falls short of what they hoped to see from the year-old Kinew government.
Speaking in Winnipeg on the first day of the annual convention for members of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, Kinew announced a five-year funding top-up, with each annual contribution of $12.4 million divided among Manitoba's 137 municipalities on a per-capita basis.
"I'm very happy today to announce the creation of a new dedicated operating stream of dollars that will be entirely up to you to decide how to spend in your own backyards," Kinew told several hundred mayors, reeves and councillors at RBC Convention Centre.
The premier's announcement, which was received with polite applause, was met with mostly negative reviews from municipal leaders.
For decades, they have lobbied successive NDP and Progressive Conservative governments to either provide municipalities with a slice of growth revenues, such as the provincial sales tax or gasoline tax, or change legislation in order to allow them to raise more revenues of their own.
Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham, whose city stands to receive an additional $6.9 million in 2025 as a result of the new provincial funding, said the money is welcome but does not address requests by him and others to overhaul municipal funding in this province.
"I don't think it's the growth revenue we were looking for, so I think the conversations still need to happen, Gillingham said at the convention centre.
The city is slated to announce a nearly $1.4-billion operating budget on Dec. 11. The additional provincial funding announced by Kinew on Monday amounts to less than one half a percentage point of the city's budget.
Leaders from smaller Manitoba municipalities were even less enthusiastic than Gillingham.
Garth Asham, a councillor with the RM of Portage la Prairie, said the additional $61,000 his municipality is in line to receive in 2025 is not enough to tend to a backlog of infrastructure repairs.
"I don't think that will do the trick. We were obviously hoping for more. Maybe they will free up a little more money yet, but right now it's disappointing," Asham said.
The opposition Progressive Conservatives questioned whether the funding is actually new money. Lakeside MLA Trevor King, the Tories' municipal affairs critic, claimed the money is similar to funding cut from Building Sustainable Communities, a former PC infrastructure program.
"This financial shell game is not what the premier promised nor what municipalities expected," King said in a statement.
Gillingham and other municipal leaders did praise one aspect of Kinew's announcement. The additional funding will flow between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, which is the timeframe for municipal budgets, instead of being delayed to the next provincial budget year, which runs from April 1 to March 31.
Municipalities repeat call to ratchet back municipal board
Mayors and reeves in Manitoba also called on the NDP government Monday to ratchet back the powers of the provincially-appointed board that has the power to overturn local land-use decisions.
The Association of Manitoba Municipalities repeated a request for the Kinew government to make substantial changes to the municipal board, which was granted expansive powers during former premier Brian Pallister's PC government.
Mayors and reeves have long complained the unelected board now has the power to reverse decisions made by elected councils.
On Monday, Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson asked Kinew to speed up a promised review of the board, while RM of Cartier Reeve Christa Vann Mitchell questioned whether Manitoba even needs a municipal board.
Kinew has already promised to amend legislation that will effectively reduce the number of municipal decisions that can be second-guessed by the municipal board.
A review of the board, however, has no prospective end date.
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