Winnipeg needs the old Sam Katz back.

Remember the common sense businessman who swept to power in 2004 on a commitment to fix our streets and make them safe again? Remember the commitment to keep property taxes low, eliminate the business tax and cut wasteful spending at City Hall?

Well what happened to that guy?

Lately, he has been following in former mayor Glen Murray’s footsteps by simply blaming the provincial government for a ‘lack of funding.’ He has also been hiking taxes and creating new fees. He seems to have given up on cutting wasteful spending at City Hall all together.

In his early days Sam Katz delivered on some great victories for taxpayers. He cut the business tax from 9.75 to 7.75 per cent and froze property taxes. He also cut waste at City Hall.

For example, instead of having city workers pick up garbage in the south part of Winnipeg, he hired a private company to do the work. That not only reduced costs by $2.3 million per year, complaints dropped too; by 20-25 per cent annually.

One would think he would be eager to explore having better delivery for other services , and at a lower price, but the Mayor has yet to initiate a widespread search.

In fact, he did something that makes it hard to pursue more savings. Twice in the past five years he has signed agreements with the city’s largest union (CUPE) that guarantees them no layoffs.

Could you imagine the Mayor signing a contract like this in his own business? Would he guarantee his own employees at the Goldeyes that he wouldn’t lay them off? Of course not. So why would he be so reckless with our money?

And it’s not that the Mayor doesn’t know about the ‘no layoff’ clause. He has been briefed on it many times in the past; he just hasn’t done anything about it.

Although Mayor Katz was elected as a ‘fix our streets’ candidate, he now claims the city doesn’t have enough money to fix them. Yet somehow he always seem to find hundreds of millions of dollars for things like the new rapid transit corridor, a new stadium, a convention centre expansion and a water park subsidy.

The city even has $14 million to build a new pedestrian bridge that will be located right beside – another new pedestrian bridge. You see, the city is going to include space on the new Disraeli Bridge for pedestrians to use and will use the posts from the old Disraeli Bridge to build a separate new pedestrian bridge. Both will be just 400 metres down the river from the pedestrian space on the existing Louise Bridge. Money to burn indeed.

As for crime, it’s has gotten out of control under the Mayor’s watch. Sure, the weak court system is out of the Mayor’s control, but where is the new policing strategy we were told would be coming out months ago?

It’s no coincidence that as the Mayor has strayed from his old common sense ways, his approval rating has dropped. He now has the third lowest approval level among Mayors in Canada. Clearly, we need the old Sam Katz back.

By: Colin Craig
Posted: December 06, 2011
Topic: Manitoba

Contact the regional director Colin Craig for further information.

Type: Commentary

Join Us   |   Donate