Winnipeg School Division approves 5.89% tax hike

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This article was published 14/03/2016 (3530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg School Division trustees raised taxes by 5.89 per cent Monday night — and lambasted both the province and the city for imperilling the quality of education for disadvantaged kids.

The $396-million budget reduced or delayed mental health, aboriginal education and physical education programs, while raising the price for milk at lunch, board chairman Mark Wasyliw seethed before the final vote.

“We have no control over the province underfunding Winnipeg School Division. This certainly isn’t the budget I’d planned on passing this year — it is a product of the external pressures on Winnipeg School Division,” Wasyliw declared.

The division learned a record number of successful commercial property assessments had cost the division $5.5 million in tax revenue, Wasyliw said. It lost another $1.2 million by the city’s downtown development tax-free incentives.

“Unlike commercial owners, homeowners can’t pass on costs to their customers,” he said.

“Winnipeg School Division does not have a spending problem, it has a funding problem,” finance chairman Chris Broughton told the board. “It is a model that can’t sustain itself. We cannot ensure student success through continued cuts and continued savings.”

Trustee Mike Babinsky voted against the budget along with Cathy Collins and Dean Koshelanyk. Babinsky said the city’s assessment department must be held accountable for a record $158.6 million in successful commercial assessment appeals. “Who could have over-assessed these properties? Who trained these people?” Babinsky said.

But Collins told the board they’d been warned about the impact of appeals by former secretary-treasurer Rene Appelmans, who unexpectedly announced his retirement late in 2015 just as budget planning began.

Collins said the board added $3 million in spending a year ago that was not essential, and that’s hitting home this year. “We cannot sustain our operations without drastic future cuts,” Collins said.

The tax increase would be $74 on an average house worth $203,900, or $108.88 in higher taxes for the owner of a home assessed at $300,000. The board dug into its reserves for $587,800 to keep the tax hit from being even greater.

Trustees had been looking at a five per cent increase until less than two weeks ago, when the city advised that owners of commercial properties had appealed their assessments so successfully a record $158.6 million in assessed business property values were gone. That initially led to a 6.4 per cent jump in taxes, before further whittling got it down to 5.89 per cent.

The division has approved nine schools for full-day kindergarten, but the four proposed for September are down to two.

Trustees had planned to start charging some parents to rent or buy band instruments, but after realizing the move would bring in $69,000 at best, while possibly discouraging participation in band, they ditched the notion.

They will, however, end 39 years of 10-cent lunch milk by asking parents who can afford it to pay 25 cents a day.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca