Mayor needs to take helm of growing city

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/10/2018 (2693 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Now that the smoke has cleared from the civic election, it’s time for Mayor Brian Bowman and his partially reconstructed council to get down to the work of preparing the city for the future.

In case you hadn’t noticed, that future is knocking pretty hard on the city’s front door.

Winnipeg is growing faster than most other cities in the country. Since 2014, more than 50,000 people have moved to the city. If we continue at that pace, and there is every reason to believe we will, existing levels of city services and infrastructure will not be enough keep the city functional.

The agenda for the next four years is largely Bowman’s responsibility, and he needs to demonstrate to the city that he has the ideas, and can cultivate the support on council to get stuff done.

Increasing diversity from population growth, an epidemic of methamphetamine use, continuing demands for more and better infrastructure, and the relentless demand to maintain Winnipeg’s status as an affordable city: no matter how you look at those trends, that means a steady diet of change for a city that — if the recent referendum rejecting the reopening of Portage and Main to pedestrians is any indication — hasn’t shown much of an appetite for change.

Faced with a challenge like that, it’s easy for local government to become overly focused on day-to-day challenges — making sure the buses run, the garbage gets collected and the potholes get filled — while ignoring bigger, longer-term challenges. At this critical point in the city’s evolution, that would be a horrible mistake.

Undoubtedly, those who survived the election will have priorities to pursue. However, the agenda for the next four years is largely Bowman’s responsibility, and he needs to demonstrate to the city that he has the ideas, and can cultivate the support on council to get stuff done.

What should Bowman and council undertake as priorities over the next four years? Opinions will vary, but there are some obvious challenges that should be on the top of the list:

Looking beyond roads: Bowman made the city’s six-year, $976-million road renewal program a top priority in his re-election campaign. And that’s a good thing, but there should be limits for everything.

The city has finally reached a point where annual investments in road renewal ($116 million last year alone) are bringing down the combined infrastructure deficit. In other words, we’ve reached the tipping point where we’re investing enough to reduce the problem.

So, perhaps its time to look at other infrastructure needs, such as recreation facilities, which are falling apart. Given the needs in other areas of city infrastructure, there is little moral or economic justification for continuing to jack up spending on roads. Bowman and council are going to have to learn to curb their devotion to roads and look at other investments.

The future of rapid transit: Under Bowman, there should be some momentum to expand Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Phases one and two — which will provide dedicated busways from the University of Manitoba to downtown — will be completed in 2020. However, the future of up to five other BRT routes is unclear.

Bowman campaigned in 2014 on completing the other five BRT routes by 2030. Given that it will have taken a decade to get the first route completed, that seems overly ambitious. However, it is important to make more progress on BRT to ensure we aren’t stuck with one spoke in what was supposed to be a six-spoke transit network.

This will require not only locking down council’s support, but also securing a long-term capital and operating agreement with the Progressive Conservative provincial government. In pursuit of their own fiscal goals, the Tories have cut transit funding to the city. It’s going to be very important for Bowman to avoid more conflict with Premier Brian Pallister and get down to the business of forging a common vision on the future of transit.

Settle development fees: Bowman deserves tremendous credit for pushing through the city’s first attempt at charging developers an added fee to help pay for the cost of urban sprawl. However, the money collected to date is in limbo pending the outcome of a lawsuit launched by homebuilders and related parties.

Bowman needs to settle this dispute while maintaining the fees as a viable additional source of revenue for the city. And, he needs to clarify how the development fee will be applied to infill development in older neighbourhoods. Charging the same fee on infill in core neighbourhoods would be a profound step backwards in the evolution of a policy designed to cover the costs of urban sprawl. However, infill developers need certainty about whether they’re going to have to pay something, and if so, how much.

If there is a common thread that runs through each of these files, it is Bowman’s ability to secure enough support on council to get things done. The mayor’s dream of reopening Portage and Main was ultimately undone because he couldn’t muster the support among councillors to reject Coun. Jeff Browaty’s plebiscite proposal.

Although that issue is more or less dead, Bowman should be prepared to have council turn on him again in the future. Browaty has certainly demonstrated that council can resist mayoral priorities. Having done that once, why wouldn’t they try it again?

Bowman has said he wants to prepare the city for that inevitable day when Winnipeg’s population cracks the one million mark. If that’s true, he needs to show here and now that he has the support in city hall to make that a reality.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca