Roads will crumble, city warns province

WINNIPEG — Mayor Sam Katz says the city’s roads and infrastructure will crumble, and it will be the province’s fault for not allowing a new tax on development.

“We’ve said we can’t do this with property tax — we’ve made that very clear,” Katz said Wednesday.

Earlier, Premier Greg Selinger slammed the door on the city’s request for legislative changes that would allow city hall to levy a new “development charge,” which would add more than $10,000 to the cost of new homes in suburbs. The city says it’s needed to raise money to pay for infrastructure.

“They have ways to do these things already,” Selinger said at an unrelated  Wednesday morning event that was also attended by Katz. “We are transferring a record amount of actual hard dollars to them for infrastructure and we will do other infrastructure projects with them. We are not bringing forward any additional legislation.”

Katz has already signalled that another property tax increase is on the way for Winnipeg homeowners in 2014, a plan that prompted Coun. Scott Fielding to quit the mayor’s Executive Policy Committee in protest. Katz and city hall are also under fire over allegations of overspending and unfair contracting in the building of new fire halls.

But Katz insisted even more property taxes won’t be enough to pay for services in the growing city.

“From my point of view, if the province says ‘No,’ we’re creatures of the province. There is not more we can do,” Katz said. “But that tells me and everyone else that our infrastructure challenges are going to get beyond the capacity for us to ever keep up. Forget about new, just keeping up — and you are going to complain more and more about potholes, curbs, sidewalks.”