Addressing social issues needs revenues from economic growth: MHCA

Winnipeg City Council must attend to addressing the social issues of addictions, homelessness and crime, but it will require the financial resources that only economic growth can spin off, MHCA President Chris Lorenc notes.

Lorenc sent Mayor Scott Gillingham and City Council a memo on pressing municipal priorities, in advance of the Mayor’s strategic planning session with his council colleagues Jan. 13-15.

“We applaud the decision to meet away from the city in a multi-day strategic planning session. That bodes well for cohesion and governance,” Lorenc’s note to the Council says.

“Addressing our social challenges – crime, addiction, homelessness – is widely regarded as the pressing priority. The MHCA agrees.

“This priority requires immediate and coordinated civic and senior level of government attention and investment. In the long term, it will also require financial resources derived from growth.”

The MHCA laid out six priority areas for City Council to consider in its deliberations during the planning session. Those six are:

1. Enhance the Manager of Economic Development position
   
   1. Make this a level equivalent of CFO or COO, reporting to SPC on Finance, Innovation & Economic Development
   2. View all city capital programs as investments through an economic growth lens
2. New Fiscal Deal
   
   1. Press to negotiate a new fiscal deal with the provincial and, by extension, federal governments. All municipalities are burdened by limited revenue streams, created at the turn of the century, which are inadequate to the vastly broadened civic mandate.
3. Annual & Five-Year Operating Budget
   The MHCA supported the development of the four-year operating budget. We submit the next logical step is an annual and five-year operating budget. This enables in-sync, long-term fiscal consideration of operating and capital planning challenges and opportunities.
4. Establish a Treasury Board Secretariat
   
   1. Serves not just as a clearinghouse for financial and fiscal considerations but allows
      
      1. coordination of fiscal policy development and strategies
      2. oversight of reporting and accountability, department-wide
5. Establish a Research Branch
   
   1. Responsible to the elected branch and independent of administration
   2. Establishes an independent venue to research policy directions and options
   3. Helps create healthy and objective policy development, amid competing demands
      
      1. Provides for checks and balances
6. Our economy rides on roads
   Roads move people to jobs and products to market. But if you can’t move it, you can’t sell it. This collective reality is why public investment in transportation infrastructure shows amongst the highest return to GDP. Therefore,
   
   1. Update the Local & Regional street system condition & needs assessment.
      
      1. Ensure a sustainable funding model outcome
      2. Keep the deal – maintain the dedicated tax to the L&R Street Renewal Program
      3. The dedicated annual tax, a total 2%, was implemented in 2013 and 2014 to improve our local and regional streets.
      4. While the plan has drifted from a number of its elements (ie. use of frontage levies to replace a portion of the 2%), its intent and application remain critical to our transportation network. The revenues must continue to be dedicated to street renewal.
      5. Press for successor and sustainable funding agreements with senior levels of government
   2. Develop a detailed strategic transportation infrastructure investment plan.
      
      1. Prioritize projects that will provide the best ROI to GDP

“An invest to grow strategy can serve as the backbone not just to prudent financial stewardship for the next operating and capital budget cycles but to enable flexible municipal fiscal power,” Lorenc’s brief says.

Gillingham and his budget working group are preparing the 2023 municipal operating and capital budget now. It is expected to be released in February.