Winnipeg Construction X

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by esquire

I'm not so sure about that. The suburbs bring with them massive infrastructure construction and maintenance costs. What are the major big ticket infrastructure needs of the old part of Winnipeg? Combined sewer replacement and bridge replacements? Also, the CBD still brings in a pile of tax revenue.

I believe police budget is around $335 million fire $225 capital projects $565 and road repair 150

[building_lover]

Originally Posted by thurmas

The cops and fire costs are due primarily to all the chaos in the core and North end the suburbs pay to keep those areas policed and with fire protection. If unicity was broken up Winnipeg proper would go bankrupt

Let's not be disingenuous...

The police budget is sky high because they are politically untouchable and receive whatever they ask for. It goes up regardless of whether crime is up or down. Nobody in 'Winnipeg proper' is urging the police to buy tanks, robot dogs, and helicopters...

[thurmas]

Police and fire budget 85% of costs is salaries. If we were peaceful like Quebec City or Hamilton we could slash those budgets in half literally just look at the Quebec City Police budget.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by thurmas

Police and fire budget 85% of costs is salaries. If we were peaceful like Quebec City or Hamilton we could slash those budgets in half literally just look at the Quebec City Police budget.

I don't dispute that our emergency services costs are high. But the suburbs have their own massive price tag.

[flatlander]

Originally Posted by esquire

Interesting how Conservation seems to be resistant to ending up downtown like most other government departments. But at least it's a step in the right direction, haha.

At least some of Conservation ended up in the AA Heaps building (think that's what it's called?) on Portage. Didn't hear about 1181 Portage but maybe there too.

[dmacc]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Sure, here's the quick math with sources:

• This City of Calgary PDF puts their 2023 operating budget, net of capital, at $4.696 billion (on page 5). We should minus $832 million for water treatment, wastewater, and stormwater (retrieved from this link) to make an apples-to-apples comparison with Winnipeg since Winnipeg's operating budget doesn't include utilities - they are presented separately in Winnipeg. So the 2023 adjusted operating budget for Calgary is $3.864 billion.
• This City of Winnipeg PDF puts their 2023 preliminary operating budget, net of capital, at $1.089 billion (on page 280).
• This Statistics Canada Table 17-10-0142-01 puts Calgary's 2022 population at 1,413,800 and Winnipeg's population at 783,096.
• Dividing their respective operating budgets by population yields $2,732 per person in Calgary, and $1,391 per person in Winnipeg.
• Apologies for not having 2023 population counts available to contrast against the 2023 budget for same year comparisons, but the number likely won't change too much once 2023 population figures are released.

Originally Posted by thurmas

Police and fire budget 85% of costs is salaries. If we were peaceful like Quebec City or Hamilton we could slash those budgets in half literally just look at the Quebec City Police budget.

Based off Winnipeggers quick math and the difference between Calgary and Winnipeg's average property taxes, while also accounting for Calgary's Higher income($85,000 vs $69,500). If you take todays police budget relative to the city budget if we paid property taxes at the same rate per capita as Calgary, the Public Order and Safety budget would only account for 28% of our city budget instead of 44% today.

$2700 Calgary Avg Tax
$1400 Wpg AVG Tax

$85,000 Calgary avg income
$69,500 Wpg avg income (82% of Calgary income)

$2700 Calgary avg income
x .82 Wpg income relative to Calgary
$2207.64 Wpg tax to be similary to Calgary (58% higher than Wpg current)

$1,089 Billion (Wpg current Operating)
x 1.58 Increase needed to be similar to Calgary
$1,717 Billion (New budget similar to Calgary)

$482,770,000 Current Public Order and Safety budget
/$1,717 Billion (New budget similar to Calgary)
28% of new Wpg budget

Looks like years of property tax freezes has been what's really held us back.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by thurmas

Police and fire budget 85% of costs is salaries. If we were peaceful like Quebec City or Hamilton we could slash those budgets in half literally just look at the Quebec City Police budget.

Everyone in this city is squabbling over scraps. Yes, Police and Fire (and their salaries) take up a massive portion of the City's budget which leaves little room for anything else. But guess what? It's not that those services have budgets that are necessarily out of line with other Canadian cities when adjusting for population, it's that Winnipeg just brings in such little revenue compared to other cities that proportionally the Police and Fire budgets look massive.

For 2023, Winnipeg's total operating budget is $1.28 Billion, or $1,634 per person (population: 783,096). In comparison, Quebec's total operating budget is $1.77 billion, or $3,175 per person (population: 557,390). So Quebec's operating budget is much higher than Winnipeg's, with a much smaller population, and as a result per-capita expenditures are 94% higher than Winnipeg's.

When looking strictly at Police, Winnipeg's Police budget is $316M, which is $403 per capita, while Quebec's Police budget is $148M, which is $265 per capita, so 32% lower.

So when looking at Quebec, yes they spend less proportionally on Police when adjusting for population, but there is no way around the fact that they tax a lot more in Quebec, likely have a better provision of goods and services to help vulnerable populations, and don't have to deal with the after effects of our collective national legacy of colonialism on Indigenous peoples.

I've said this so many times and I'll repeat it again: Winnipeg as a city is underfunded, and we are left to carry the majority of the national burden that colonialism has inflicted in Indigenous peoples. This is a national tragedy and issue that will not be solved without massive federal assistance that comes from all provinces. As a nation, everyone was complicit in the problems we made for an entire segment of the population and yet Prairie cities, especially Winnipeg and Edmonton, are alone the ones left to pick up the pieces and deal with the issues that remain. Elected officials at a national level need to step up and give special attention to cities like Winnipeg in dealing with this problem. Special funding for non-profits, addictions issues, and providing housing are necessary to fix problems that lead to bloated police budgets.

Until everyone acknowledges this issue, we are going to be continually responding to ever increasing crime and unhoused populations, and the police budget will simply grow - either via adopted budgets or approved overtime at the end of the fiscal year - because one way or another action needs to be taken against these problems.

[WinCitySparky]

^ Great points

[GreyGarden]

Winnipegger, your points about prairie cities carrying a significant portion of the consequences from colonialism are very well made and put into words thoughts that I’ve had about this particular issue.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by GreyGarden

Winnipegger, your points about prairie cities carrying a significant portion of the consequences from colonialism are very well made and put into words thoughts that I’ve had about this particular issue.

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I guess I just get so frustrated on the state of national discourse when it comes to issues like policing, colonization, and Indigenous reconciliation. So many "progressives" in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa that want to advance "reconciliation" with nice blog posts, fancy PDF documents coming out of think tanks, hiring "diversity and inclusion" coordinators, posting on social media, celebrating [insert progressive initiative] day, etc., but so little tangible action on how to tackle these issues because so many of these thought leaders and policy wonks and progressive pundits are far removed from the every day reality of the poverty, addictions, and crime cycle faced by the Indigenous communities in Prairie cities.

It takes the combined Indigenous population of the Vancouver and Toronto CMA to equate to the number of Indigenous people in Winnipeg (~100,000), yet these CMA's account for 8.8 million people in total. The centres from which all this progressive reconciliation talk come from are detached from the centres where the effects of policy (or lack thereof) are most vividly felt.

And before someone says this isn't related to construction in Winnipeg, it absolutely indirectly is. A significant part of the image of our downtown, and therefore desire to develop and build there, absolutely hinges on the social and economic direction the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to our downtown are heading in. You won't build a vibrant Exchange District, Waterfront Drive, Centennial, South Portage, or Assiniboine-Broadway unless North Point Douglass, Lord Selkirk Park, Spence, Centennial, Dufferin, William Whyte, and Burrows Central are improving. Simply due to geographic proximity, what occurs in those neighborhoods spills over to our downtown, which affects safety, perception, and ultimately market desirability for employers and residents to locate there.

While infrastructure, walkability, architecture, transit, and urban fabric are all important components of downtown's ability to attract investment and people, no single issue will impact downtown's rejuvenation or decline more than the wellbeing of the primarily Indigenous neighborhoods that border our downtown. And many Indigenous people, who have been subject to the effects of colonialism, will be strongly affected by the resources and support provided or not provided to them by their community, municipal, provincial, and federal governments.

So you can make all the master plans you want, and you can redesign streetscapes and add bike lanes, and plant trees, and give out TIFs, and add funnelnators, and build rapid transit lines, but if Indigenous people in inner-city neighborhoods continue to suffer, poverty and crime will follow, which makes downtown feel unsafe, which drives away employers and residents, end of story.

[Rutlander]

Any chance, Winnipegger, you running for office? Seriously, we need leadership in our country to articulate and act on the points you've made.

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by Rutlander

Any chance, Winnipegger, you running for office? Seriously, we need leadership in our country to articulate and act on the points you've made.

Seconded! Winnipegger is now our new Mayor, and possibly Premier.

[phone]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I guess I just get so frustrated on the state of national discourse when it comes to issues like policing, colonization, and Indigenous reconciliation. So many "progressives" in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa that want to advance "reconciliation" with nice blog posts, fancy PDF documents coming out of think tanks, hiring "diversity and inclusion" coordinators, posting on social media, celebrating [insert progressive initiative] day, etc., but so little tangible action on how to tackle these issues because so many of these thought leaders and policy wonks and progressive pundits are far removed from the every day reality of the poverty, addictions, and crime cycle faced by the Indigenous communities in Prairie cities.

It takes the combined Indigenous population of the Vancouver and Toronto CMA to equate to the number of Indigenous people in Winnipeg (~100,000), yet these CMA's account for 8.8 million people in total. The centres from which all this progressive reconciliation talk come from are detached from the centres where the effects of policy (or lack thereof) are most vividly felt.

And before someone says this isn't related to construction in Winnipeg, it absolutely indirectly is. A significant part of the image of our downtown, and therefore desire to develop and build there, absolutely hinges on the social and economic direction the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to our downtown are heading in. You won't build a vibrant Exchange District, Waterfront Drive, Centennial, South Portage, or Assiniboine-Broadway unless North Point Douglass, Lord Selkirk Park, Spence, Centennial, Dufferin, William Whyte, and Burrows Central are improving. Simply due to geographic proximity, what occurs in those neighborhoods spills over to our downtown, which affects safety, perception, and ultimately market desirability for employers and residents to locate there.

While infrastructure, walkability, architecture, transit, and urban fabric are all important components of downtown's ability to attract investment and people, no single issue will impact downtown's rejuvenation or decline more than the wellbeing of the primarily Indigenous neighborhoods that border our downtown. And many Indigenous people, who have been subject to the effects of colonialism, will be strongly affected by the resources and support provided or not provided to them by their community, municipal, provincial, and federal governments.

So you can make all the master plans you want, and you can redesign streetscapes and add bike lanes, and plant trees, and give out TIFs, and add funnelnators, and build rapid transit lines, but if Indigenous people in inner-city neighborhoods continue to suffer, poverty and crime will follow, which makes downtown feel unsafe, which drives away employers and residents, end of story.

This is so well said and applies just as much to Saskatoon and Regina as it does to Winnipeg.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

When looking strictly at Police, Winnipeg's Police budget is $316M, which is $403 per capita, while Quebec's Police budget is $148M, which is $265 per capita, so 32% lower.

I am not fully up to speed on policing in Quebec City but might some of that lower cost be due to the separation of roles between the QPP and the Quebec City police force while in Winnipeg the WPD covers everything in Winnipeg?

For example if the city police are pulling recruits from a joint training program with the QPP and say share a crime lab those are some fairly large costs WPD is fully taking on and I am sure there are other cost sharing opportunities Quebec may be benefitting from.

--

Separate outside of Winnipeg the cost for paramedics are under Shared Health (aka the province). How come in Winnipeg it is the local taxpayers picking up those costs?

[thebasketballgeek]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I guess I just get so frustrated on the state of national discourse when it comes to issues like policing, colonization, and Indigenous reconciliation. So many "progressives" in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa that want to advance "reconciliation" with nice blog posts, fancy PDF documents coming out of think tanks, hiring "diversity and inclusion" coordinators, posting on social media, celebrating [insert progressive initiative] day, etc., but so little tangible action on how to tackle these issues because so many of these thought leaders and policy wonks and progressive pundits are far removed from the every day reality of the poverty, addictions, and crime cycle faced by the Indigenous communities in Prairie cities.

It takes the combined Indigenous population of the Vancouver and Toronto CMA to equate to the number of Indigenous people in Winnipeg (~100,000), yet these CMA's account for 8.8 million people in total. The centres from which all this progressive reconciliation talk come from are detached from the centres where the effects of policy (or lack thereof) are most vividly felt.

And before someone says this isn't related to construction in Winnipeg, it absolutely indirectly is. A significant part of the image of our downtown, and therefore desire to develop and build there, absolutely hinges on the social and economic direction the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to our downtown are heading in. You won't build a vibrant Exchange District, Waterfront Drive, Centennial, South Portage, or Assiniboine-Broadway unless North Point Douglass, Lord Selkirk Park, Spence, Centennial, Dufferin, William Whyte, and Burrows Central are improving. Simply due to geographic proximity, what occurs in those neighborhoods spills over to our downtown, which affects safety, perception, and ultimately market desirability for employers and residents to locate there.

While infrastructure, walkability, architecture, transit, and urban fabric are all important components of downtown's ability to attract investment and people, no single issue will impact downtown's rejuvenation or decline more than the wellbeing of the primarily Indigenous neighborhoods that border our downtown. And many Indigenous people, who have been subject to the effects of colonialism, will be strongly affected by the resources and support provided or not provided to them by their community, municipal, provincial, and federal governments.

So you can make all the master plans you want, and you can redesign streetscapes and add bike lanes, and plant trees, and give out TIFs, and add funnelnators, and build rapid transit lines, but if Indigenous people in inner-city neighborhoods continue to suffer, poverty and crime will follow, which makes downtown feel unsafe, which drives away employers and residents, end of story.

Preach! You really spit some heat with this take.

[Highwayman]

Originally Posted by dmacc

Based off Winnipeggers quick math and the difference between Calgary and Winnipeg's average property taxes, while also accounting for Calgary's Higher income($85,000 vs $69,500). If you take todays police budget relative to the city budget if we paid property taxes at the same rate per capita as Calgary, the Public Order and Safety budget would only account for 28% of our city budget instead of 44% today.

$2700 Calgary Avg Tax
$1400 Wpg AVG Tax

$85,000 Calgary avg income
$69,500 Wpg avg income (82% of Calgary income)

$2700 Calgary avg income
x .82 Wpg income relative to Calgary
$2207.64 Wpg tax to be similary to Calgary (58% higher than Wpg current)

$1,089 Billion (Wpg current Operating)
x 1.58 Increase needed to be similar to Calgary
$1,717 Billion (New budget similar to Calgary)

$482,770,000 Current Public Order and Safety budget
/$1,717 Billion (New budget similar to Calgary)
28% of new Wpg budget

Looks like years of property tax freezes has been what's really held us back.

Average property tax of $1400???? Where the heck is that ? Selkirk Avenue. Because I have friends on Redwood that are $2200 in a house under 1000 sq ft. Heck I'm in older part of st vital and I'm $6000.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I guess I just get so frustrated on the state of national discourse when it comes to issues like policing, colonization, and Indigenous reconciliation. So many "progressives" in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa that want to advance "reconciliation" with nice blog posts, fancy PDF documents coming out of think tanks, hiring "diversity and inclusion" coordinators, posting on social media, celebrating [insert progressive initiative] day, etc., but so little tangible action on how to tackle these issues because so many of these thought leaders and policy wonks and progressive pundits are far removed from the every day reality of the poverty, addictions, and crime cycle faced by the Indigenous communities in Prairie cities.

It takes the combined Indigenous population of the Vancouver and Toronto CMA to equate to the number of Indigenous people in Winnipeg (~100,000), yet these CMA's account for 8.8 million people in total. The centres from which all this progressive reconciliation talk come from are detached from the centres where the effects of policy (or lack thereof) are most vividly felt.

And before someone says this isn't related to construction in Winnipeg, it absolutely indirectly is. A significant part of the image of our downtown, and therefore desire to develop and build there, absolutely hinges on the social and economic direction the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to our downtown are heading in. You won't build a vibrant Exchange District, Waterfront Drive, Centennial, South Portage, or Assiniboine-Broadway unless North Point Douglass, Lord Selkirk Park, Spence, Centennial, Dufferin, William Whyte, and Burrows Central are improving. Simply due to geographic proximity, what occurs in those neighborhoods spills over to our downtown, which affects safety, perception, and ultimately market desirability for employers and residents to locate there.

While infrastructure, walkability, architecture, transit, and urban fabric are all important components of downtown's ability to attract investment and people, no single issue will impact downtown's rejuvenation or decline more than the wellbeing of the primarily Indigenous neighborhoods that border our downtown. And many Indigenous people, who have been subject to the effects of colonialism, will be strongly affected by the resources and support provided or not provided to them by their community, municipal, provincial, and federal governments.

So you can make all the master plans you want, and you can redesign streetscapes and add bike lanes, and plant trees, and give out TIFs, and add funnelnators, and build rapid transit lines, but if Indigenous people in inner-city neighborhoods continue to suffer, poverty and crime will follow, which makes downtown feel unsafe, which drives away employers and residents, end of story.

Great post.

[BKB]

Originally Posted by Highwayman

Average property tax of $1400???? Where the heck is that ? Selkirk Avenue. Because I have friends on Redwood that are $2200 in a house under 1000 sq ft. Heck I'm in older part of st vital and I'm $6000.

I believe you are including the school tax.

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by BKB

I believe you are including the school tax.

He was, but 1400 still seems low. A residential property assessed at 217K would receive a property tax bill of 1400 plus frontage fees. Average house prices are north of $300k in Winnipeg

[Jeff]

The BMO signage sections are staged and ready to be hoisted up to the top of 201 Portage. I guess they got their permits in order. Apparently the next big project for that building is a full window replacement program as they're all expired.