The City of Winnipeg pays its lifeguards about $17-22 per hour. Meanwhile, the YMCA pays its lifeguards about $9-10 per hour. Not surprisingly, instead of bringing city salaries in line with those who pay taxes, some officials at city hall are more interested in increasing taxes. The latest call - hiking our province’s sales tax from 7 to 8% in order to “help finance” the city’s “needs”. Consider some other areas where the city could improve.

The city owns a parcel of land on Kenaston Blvd in the middle of some of Winnipeg’s hottest commercial property. What is the city doing with the land? It’s using it as a snow dumping site for six months of the year. Think of the property tax dollars that could be raised by developing that land.

Next, take a look at all the golf courses the city owns. In fact, one of them (Blumberg) isn’t even located in the city of Winnipeg. Considering there are 53 golf courses within an hours drive of Winnipeg, does the city really need to be in the golf course business?  Of course not, sell them and use the property tax revenue they would otherwise generate to fix our streets.

What about our public libraries? So public, the city won’t even allow you to volunteer to put books back on their shelves or read to children in them. That’s right, due to a union agreement, volunteers are restricted from helping out with providing those services and a myriad of other ones. Allowing volunteers to help out with city services could help reduce the city’s labour costs. Why didn’t council address that problem before it renewed the agreement earlier this year?

Speaking of libraries, couldn’t Winnipeg do like the City of Vancouver did and develop co-usage libraries? Vancouver’s Britannia library is used by both the public and the Britannia Secondary School. That means taxpayers only have to pay to maintain one building, one electricity bill, one set of resources, shared staffing, etc.

Of course that type of reform hasn’t happened as libraries report to the city’s “Community Services” department. This is the same department that has been crying for years that it’s “cut to the bone”. Meanwhile, earlier this year the Canadian Taxpayers Federation discovered that that department has been running a boat tour service up and down the Red River for decades. Imagine that, the city has been using our property tax dollars to subsidize a faltering boat tour service instead of using those funds to fix our roads and bridges.

What about council itself? If city council followed the City of Toronto’s lead and introduced a $500 a year limit on expensed meals by councillors, our city could probably save $10,000 per year.

If we look at the grants city council hands out, inappropriate spending continues. This year council voted to give $7 million towards the creation of a water park. What does that have to do with the city’s mandate of ‘pipes, pavement and policing’? Consider three grants the city handed out totaling $600 for people to attend “youth activist retreats”. Again, the city needs to concentrate on its core responsibilities. 

These examples only scratch the surface of areas for improvement at City Hall. If one thing is for certain, council doesn’t need more taxing powers, it needs to spend the dollars we do give it in a more cost-effective way.