2024 wildfire season is on track to be second largest in last two decades

The powers that be in Winnipeg have pushed for cheap property taxes for decades. As a result, the city doesn’t have enough money to balance the books, let alone maintain infrastructure, deliver services and respond to challenges like homelessness and the toxic drug crisis.

Winnipeg’s fiscal problem stems from decades of keeping property-tax increases below inflation and relying on inadequate revenues to fund a growing city. The result? Today, Winnipeg spends less money per person on city services than it did in 2001.

A look at the books at city hall is stark. Winnipeg has run a deficit almost every year since the COVID-19 pandemic because of climate-change-driven heavy ice and snowstorms, higher fuel costs and increased policing overtime. During this time, city council tried to cut and freeze public service spending where it could; as a result, community services have been cut to the bone.

Departments responsible for what makes a city a good place to live have been squeezed. Since 1999, community services — responsible for libraries, recreation, swimming lessons and aspects of Winnipeg’s poverty-reduction work — has 149 fewer staff positions, an 18 per cent reduction, even as the city’s population has grown 35 per cent, or by 220,000 people.

At least three police cars were present at the under-construction Fairmont Winnipeg Thursday evening.

The nature of the response was unclear, but officers were guiding traffic outside of the construction zone at 2 Lombard Place while the response was underway. At 6:50 p.m., traffic was flowing normally.

Security on site provided no information on the response, but an individual working behind site fencing told the Free Press there’d be no comment from anyone on site as to why police were on scene at this time.

An SUV with a Government of Manitoba logo on its side was also present alongside personnel from Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health. However, it’s unknown if it’s connected to the police response.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’m in love with my sister’s boyfriend, and neither one of them knows it. They’re both grad students and came back home from the province where they are studying to write and spend the summer in Manitoba.

Thankfully, they’ve gone back home because it was becoming too much for me to bear. My sister’s guy is perfect for me, but she already owns him and I’m too young to fight her for him.

Still, the two of them don’t realize the depth of my feelings. I don’t know how to behave when they get cosy around me and I feel so jealous I want to scream. I’m not sure what to do next.

This week I got an email from my artsy-fartsy sister with an invitation to come visit them in December and go to some fun plays and parties with them and their friends. They even promised my Christmas present from them will be my plane ticket.

Manitoba Hydro at it again

As a former resident of Windsor Park, I often ride my bicycle through the neighbourhood or walk the shaded pathway from Elizabeth Road to Cottonwood Drive. It’s a favourite walkway for residents with dogs as well. While passing the pathway at Elizabeth Road the other day I was dismayed to see crews clear-cutting the mature trees between the pathway and the CPKC tracks that stretch the length of Archibald Street.

At first I thought that the crews were clearing out the dense bushes and trees at the start of the pathway. I made a note to return to see if that was all that was going to be done. (When) I drove by the trees had been clear-cut to the end of the first street and access point to it, much to my dismay and horror. I parked my car and went to speak with a worker doing the tree removal.

I was informed that it was a Hydro corridor and that the work would clear-cut every tree between Elizabeth Road and Cottonwood Road. Perhaps the plan is to continue on through Southdale and Island Lakes. At a time of diminishing tree canopies around Winnipeg and the drive to plant a million trees, this decision is outrageous and lacks respect for our current climate situation and neighbourhood esthetics.