School board bows to province

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/03/2019 (2546 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s largest school board toed the line on property taxes to save itself $1 million in provincial penalties that would have likely ended in pink slips for administration staff.

But the board held its collective nose in doing so at a special budget vote held Monday evening.

The Winnipeg School Division, which oversees schools for 33,000 students, cut its proposed property tax increase back from 2.9 per cent to two per cent, in keeping with a provincial directive.

“This was definitely a Kelvin Goertzen budget. Kelvin Goertzen set the rules. He handcuffed and painted trustees into a corner — and not just the Winnipeg School Division, but right across this province,” a visibly frustrated WSD board chairman Chris Broughton told media Monday evening.

A little over a week ago, Manitoba Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen warned any school division that exceeded the property tax decree would be slapped with extra administration cutbacks.

The province has the authority to levy such penalties, which could have added up to a 20 per cent cut in administration costs.

That would have worked out to about $1 million in administrative cuts for the WSD, the only school division that threatened to exceed the property tax cap.

The province and the division had waged a war of words over the issue for weeks.

The board meeting wrapped up an hour after it got underway at the school board’s West End offices. Seven of the nine trustees voted to keep the property tax increase under the provincial cap.

Broughton was one of two trustees to vote against the cap.

As it stood, the budget will maintain programs and services, keeping the status quo for the upcoming school year.

But the next budget will likely see cuts in services and programs, trustees warned.

Had the school board defied the province, the tax increase would have raised funds to hire a new autism clinical psychologist, provide more day programs for students with disabilities and more staff to cater to early childhood needs.

All of that was put on hold.

“What you saw is (that) we passed a budget that followed the rules laid out for us,” WSD finance committee chairwoman Lisa Naylor said. “There was no wiggle room.”

Fellow trustee Jennifer Chen also called out the minister’s timing in an email just ahead of the final vote.

“The minister of education waited to announce this direction, fully aware that school boards have already completed their community consultations on draft budgets,” Chen said.

The threatened provincial penalty meant the WSD had to revise its budget and cut administration costs by 2.7 per cent. Last year, the province issued a similar directive, but asked for a three per cent reduction.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca