City homeowners warned about tax bill sticker shock

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This article was published 19/03/2025 (245 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amid the hefty City of Winnipeg tax hike, some city council members have warned residents about education levies that will tack even higher costs on to residents’ bills.

Mayor Scott Gillingham stressed the highest property tax hike in decades is not to blame for a significant portion of bills the city will send out this year, noting the full tab will include major education levy hikes for many residents.

Gillingham said some school tax increases appear to be at “almost historic” levels, though divisions deem the city’s numbers “misleading.”

“We’ve got school divisions here increasing property taxes by… (more than) 16 per cent, which is certainly a far greater increase on the average home than the municipal tax this year,” he said.

Provincial legislation has long required the city to collect education taxes on behalf of the province.

For example, the mayor told reporters a $371,100 sample home in the Louis Riel School Division will pay $316 more in school taxes this year.

A city report states school divisions with at least some Winnipeg students will add tax hikes to the sample home that range from about 9.5 per cent to 16.5 per cent this year, with the largest hike in Louis Riel.

The total amount of money school divisions raise through property taxes will rise from 10.4 per cent to 18.4 per cent higher this year, the city says.

While city bills list the charges for municipal property taxes and the provincial education support levy, Coun. Jeff Browaty (North Kildonan) said the city still gets many complaints for fees it doesn’t set.

“(In) my own house, the vast majority of the increase is going to go to the school division, not to the city,” said Browaty, council’s finance chairman.

When asked how much of the city’s effort to highlight school levy increases is linked to its own 5.95 per cent property tax hike, the largest one-year increase since the 1990s, Browaty stressed the city isn’t alone in hiking fees to cover its costs.

“I’ve been on council a fairly long time at this point and this has been the highest property tax increase, I believe… But (these are) also by far the highest education tax increases we’ve seen,” said the councillor, who was first elected in 2006.

Meanwhile, school divisions say the city’s numbers are misleading. The divisions largely present tax hikes in changes to the mill rate, increases that will rise from zero per cent to 6.4 per cent higher this year.

The mill rate is the amount of tax payable per dollar of a property’s assessed value.

Chris Sigurdson, chair of the board of the Louis Riel School Division, said his division did approve the highest tax hike among local school divisions this year.

However, it should be described as a 6.4 per cent mill rate hike, not the much higher increase noted by the city, he said.

“We’re saying that we can’t trust those numbers and that the variance is so high. It’s unrealistic and it’s misleading to say that people in Louis Riel School Division are paying (as much as the city says),” said Sigurdson.

He said the mill rate hike is reasonable and is the element of the levy that the school division can control.

“If we controlled what the (education tax) rebate was and if we controlled what changes in a (property) assessment would be, our planning could take that into account… Because we don’t control that, whatever number we’d be giving would be unreliable,” said Sigurdson.

The city’s listing of how much more a sample home will be subject to school taxes isn’t the best measure to assess costs either, since each division’s average home price varies widely, said Sigurdson.

The tax hike in Louis Riel will help cover several cost pressures faced by the division, he said.

“We have aging infrastructure, we have a new school that’s just been built,” said Sigurdson, noting a new French immersion school in Sage Creek.

He said the province paid the cost to build the school, while the division must cover the cost of teachers, desks, books, landscaping and more.

Sigurdson said the new school is desperately needed since the division expects 800 new students this year.

A taxpayers’ advocate said school divisions and the City of Winnipeg must all focus on keeping taxes as low as possible and clearly explain how all public money will be spent.

“No matter who is sending out the bill to taxpayers, it’s going to hurt their wallet just the same… The point is that Winnipeg taxpayers are feeling too much of a pinch and paying too much,” said Gage Haubrich, prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

City tax bills are typically mailed out in May.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

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Joyanne Pursaga
Reporter

Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne.

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