Gillingham, Loney cost out their mayoral campaign platforms
Two of the four leading mayoral election candidates in Winnipeg have put some numbers to their promises, explaining how they will pay for the services they would provide to citizens should they be elected.
Scott Gillingham, currently a councillor in the St. James ward, set out his big-ticket items in a release this week. Additional investment in roads would see $50 million over four years, $8 million to plan out extending Chief Peguis Trail from Main Street to Route 90, and widening Route 90, and $13 million additional for active transportation on arterial and collector streets.
The revenues, Gillingham explained, would come from increasing the frontage levy by $1.50 per foot. He would also raise the annual 2.33% property tax hike by 1.2%, to a total of 3.5%, with the additional revenue funding ward-level parks and recreation projects and general services.
Further, he would freeze the current business tax rate and any new rebates.
Shaun Loney released platform costing as well this week. The social enterprise founder and business operator said he would increase property taxes to cover investing $20 million in active transportation from 2023-2026, $2 million to protect Winnipeg’s trees and $1 million for reconciliation.
Property tax would increase to 3.7% in 2023 and increases from ’24-’26 would be determined by a tax review. Another new tax of 25 cent per day per on parking spots would also go to road repairs, transit and active transportation.
While he would phase out the business tax, he would equally increase commercial property tax rates to make up the loss in revenue.
Loney’s costing said his initiatives on freeing up police by shifting calls for service to non-profit community organizations – reducing non-urgent dispatch calls by at least 10% — would relieve the pressure to increase emergency services budgets annually. The use of social procurement to shift some workload to non-profits would also be implemented.
Other costed items in Gillingham’s platform include $1.1 million additional per year for the city’s 311 service line, to ensure prompt response to calls, augmenting phone and email contact with a chatbox.
As part of Gillingham’s plan to enlarge city revenues, he said he would enter negotiations with the provincial government for a ‘real deal for growth’ that would benefit the provincial government, too.
Topics would include confirmation of a joint strategy on legal and financial issues to phase out or merge out the separate business tax, shared targets on development decision speeds, and linking provincial grants to a growth metric (such as growth in Winnipeg-sourced PST revenue, or Winnipeg-metro GDP growth) to incentivize pro-growth approaches at the City level
Loney’s ‘build-it-better’ infrastructure innovation fund of $1 million, over four years, would be funded by a new internal levy on transportation-related capital projects.
