Pettition: Please save the Fort Garry Library
Brian Bowman is at it again bungling a city budget of almost $2 billion a year but cutting the most essential civic services Libraries. Please sign the petition to save the Fort Garry Library it is a part of the fabric of Old Fort Garry and still used by thousands every year.
https://www.change.org/p/mayor-brian...pt&utm_term=cs |
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Also, the city does not have a budget of almost $2 billion - that is the consolidated number which includes utilities and operating agencies which function more like businesses and are separate entities from the tax-supported side of municipal finances. The actual tax-supported budget, that funds things like roads, police, fire, recreation, and libraries is around $1.1 billion. You get what you pay for. Don't like it? Write your city councilor and ask them to raise our property taxes. Fun fact: if Winnipeg raised it's property taxes at the rate of local CPI inflation since 1997 instead of freezing it or decreasing it, we would have over $100 million extra in tax revenue annually, which would have totaled around $2 billion over the past 20 years. Think of all those things $2 billion would have purchased during that time, including 3 additional legs of rapid transit, a fully grade-separated ring road, and many community centres, police stations, and fire halls. Under this scheme, the average municipal bill would now be around $1,900 per year, roughly $130 more than the current of $1,770 per year. Instead, everyone around here is so keen on saving $130 a year that any politician who promises to freeze taxes yet another 4 years immediately gets the vote. Talk about a backwards-thinking city. |
If the Province would get around to removing the education portion of our tax bills, it would certainly allow the City more flexibility in raising it's taxes to a more reasonable level.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...city-1.5379798 |
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It's one of the reasons why, thanks to California's infamous Prop 13 (that cut and capped property taxes), education has become a mess in that state despite having high funding. https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...hat-went-wrong |
The announced library closures, including Fort Garry, have long been on the books. Winnipeg Library Service is well into a multi-year plan to relocate a large number of older branches into either purpose built facilities (Transconna) or commerical leases (Charleswood). That these closures are happening was decided on many years ago. The main change to the plan is the new locations won't be opening as scheduled.
From memory the Fort Garry library was to close and relocate to the recreational campus that is being planned for Bridgewater. The libraries are part of recreational campuses is an even older plan btw. |
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The Pembina Trail library was the one that was going to be relocated to Bridgwater, as it's in a leased space. |
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1. With increases in utility and other costs and no appreciable upwards movement in wages, people are cash-strapped and can ill afford increased property taxes; 2. People no longer trust the city (or governments in general for that matter, read police HQ) to spend money wisely and get good value for it. For example, the total cost of the SWBRT is astronomical for what it is, and compared with superior projects in other cities. |
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It's a very penny wise, pound foolish mentality, but politicians aren't interested in challenging it. |
^ I think WRT to the Police Headquarters - we need to account for the cost of keeping and retaining an existing building in the downtown core.
At least we can say it was a somewhat noble pursuit in the adaptive reuse of an existing structure as opposed to sending it all to the landfill and starting from scratch. |
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The whole thing was pushed through to benefit a few, now it’s an impractical building with ongoing flaws and the WPS will eventually need a new headquarters sooner than later! |
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Is the Library actually closing or is that one of the proposed options during the budget process. Note that they look at every avenue for making the budget work. In the end most of the proposals don't go ahead for obvious reasons.
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Normal folk do not understand how taxes and finance work in the daily lives. Paying bills, taking loans and such. Nevermind running a city. More taxes = bad. My Facebook feed says that loud and clear.
Most people are dumb to politics and finance and just follow along with whatever propaganda is pushed their way. Such as Andrew Scheer, Jason Kenney and all those types. Disclaimer: that is not an endorsement of Trudeau. |
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