City needs a real, detailed infrastructure plan

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This article was published 22/10/2021 (1460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Building a home that can last for generations starts with a strong foundation.

When the City of Winnipeg approved its new 25-year development plan titled OurWinnipeg 2045 and the supporting Complete Communities Direction Strategy city-wide secondary plan document in June, the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association, representing the residential construction industry, and the Urban Development Institute of Manitoba, representing the professional land development industry, argued that the foundation needed for building and implementing a successful development plan for Winnipeg is a comprehensive, strategic infrastructure plan.

City council agreed, and directed that a strategic infrastructure plan be prepared to help inform the implementation of the Complete Communities strategy.

While the City of Winnipeg’s “2020 Infrastructure Plan” has some important and useful information in it, the document itself is not a strategic infrastructure plan. The 2020 document is a listing of infrastructure projects, many of which are over-engineered or simply replacements for antiquated infrastructure, with no true direction on actual implementation.

To be a foundation upon which Winnipeg’s 25-year development plan can be implemented, our city’s strategic infrastructure plan will need to be much more than simply a list of projects the city needs. Rather, a fulsome and strategic infrastructure plan would include a number of key components currently missing from the city’s 2020 Infrastructure document, including:

• Identifying the specific, targeted goals and objectives of the strategic infrastructure plan;

• Identifying where growth can/will occur by explaining the locational or strategic importance associated with infrastructure improvements and how they will help grow Winnipeg’s tax base;

• Clearly defining an appropriate “level of service” for Winnipeg that the infrastructure is designed to provide, and identifying the scale of infrastructure improvements appropriate for a city of our size and character;

• Identifying where the “low-hanging fruit” is and providing guidance and rationale on what projects will provide the best return-on-investment (ROI) for the City of Winnipeg;

• Identifying where the City of Winnipeg can leverage other resources or funding partnerships (in particular, private investment); and

• Identifying how the plan will be implemented to achieve the goals and objectives.

We are not aware of this type of strategic infrastructure plan ever being undertaken by the City of Winnipeg. Preparing this kind of plan is not easy, but it is needed.

The city’s current population forecasts estimate that Winnipeg’s population will grow to a million people within the next 25 to 40 years. Is there an understanding as to what strategic infrastructure is needed to accommodate that level of growth? Where will the city get the greatest ROI for its limited infrastructure budget?

Where can the city leverage funding from other levels of government and, perhaps more importantly, private investment? How will the city’s strategic infrastructure plan align with the Winnipeg Metro Region’s “Plan 2050” overall regional planning document? These are all key questions that the city’s strategic infrastructure plan must answer.

Finally, implementation is a key component to any successful plan. How are we going to implement the plan while still achieving the greatest ROI, still maximizing tax base growth, and while leveraging the greatest private investment? The city’s 2020 infrastructure document does not answer these fundamental questions.

This issue can no longer continue to simply be “passed down the chain” by council to the administrative staff who seem to be recycling a list of projects that have been “on the radar” for the past two decades. Our continued economic growth, along with our population growth, is dependent on getting this right.

The development and implementation of a strategic infrastructure plan for our city will need strong leadership from both city council and the public administration. With the next municipal elections one year away, we will be calling on all candidates vying to become Winnipeg’s next mayor or running for council seats to champion this work and be accountable for its completion.

Winnipeg’s next mayor and council must make implementing a true strategic infrastructure plan – the foundation upon which our city’s future growth and prosperity will be built — a top priority for Winnipeg’s next council.

Lanny McInnes is the president and CEO of the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association and the managing director of the Urban Development Institute of Manitoba.