The budget doomsday device: How city hall floated the worst to make the mediocre seem OK

In any otheryear, a budget that closes all Winnipeg libraries on Sundays, reduces service along 14 bus routesand cuts grants to organizations like the Main Street Project would seem sort of drastic.

On Friday, Winnipeg's spending plan for 2020 cameacross as somewhat reasonable, thanks to a new budget process that Mayor Brian Bowman describes as more transparent but could just as easily be characterized as cynical, if not outright Machiavellian.

Up until this year, the budget process at city hall involved several months of closed-door negotiations between thesenior city officials who manage the public purse and the politicians who are supposed to provide some oversight and direction.

On budget day, the mayor would introduce a draft budget. The spending planwould then be presented in detail in front of a series of council subcommittees over several weeks and then, finally, debated at a special meeting of city council as a whole.

This budget season was different, however, as the mayor and council finance chair Scott Gillingham(St. James) added an extra round of public meetings to the process.

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Back in the fall, every subcommittee of council held special meetings where city department directors and division heads were supposed to inform councillors how they would meet specific spending limits.

They dutifully carried out that task, albeit by trotting out doomsday scenarios that involved massive service cuts and facility closures.

At one of those meetings in November, Winnipeg community services director Cindy Fernandes claimed her department would have to slash the number of wading pools in the city from 81 to 43, close five larger swimming pools, turn out the lights at four arenas, shutter three libraries and padlock a fitness centre in order to meet a spending target.

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To ordinary Winnipeggers who don't pay much attention to city hall, this soundedshocking. To anyone familiar with the way municipal government works, it appeared to be pure political theatre.

On budget day, none of the facility closures floated by Fernandes came to be. Terry SawchukArena in North Kildonan will remain closed, but no libraries or swimming pools are going dark.

This allowed Bowman to appear before reporters and proclaim a sort of victory on Friday.

"City facilities that are open right now will not close," the mayor said."Our priority was keeping the lights on in libraries and pools."

So never mind the fact the only remaining libraries with Sunday hours are going to be closed on Sunday, or that transit service on routes like Wolseley-St. Boniface and Crescentwood are getting scaled back, or the buspass that alloweduniversity students to take unlimited rides on Winnipeg Transit are all getting cut.

The message appears to be Winnipeggers ought to be happy that a terrible, horrible scenario unveiled in November isn't coming to pass, thanks to the work of our dedicated elected officials.

This isn't the first time Brian Bowman tried out this sort of tactic. In 2018, the initial draft of the city budget called for widespread Winnipeg Transit cuts which were later scaled back before a final council vote.

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That switcheroo made another stinker in the transit budgeta 25-cent fare hike seem reasonable in comparison.

This budget season, the scare tactics lasted months instead of weeks. The trial-balloon cuts it would give the city too much credit to call them actual proposalscaught the attention of political activists who spent months lobbying city hall not to do something no elected official would ever attempt, if they wish to be re-elected.

On Friday, some of those activists credited their lobbying efforts for putting off facility closures.

"The fact that the cuts aren't as deep as they may have been also means that community action works," said Joe Curnow, a spokesperson for a group called Budget For All.

Other observers saw through the new budget process.

"I'm optimistic that many of the cuts we heard about were just to incite that fear of closure and just coming out to look very good at the end of the day," Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood Coun. Kevin Klein said a week before budget day.

"It's like it was designed to make everyone hate their city. No matter what's important to you, you had to hear about it being cut," architect and CentreVenture board chair Brent Bellamy tweeted the night before the budget's release.

"[It] needlessly sent everyone into a panic and sucked the optimism out of the city. Some things are best done behind closed doors."

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Bowman, however, defended the new budget process, claiming it encouraged more Winnipeggers to become more engaged with municipal government.

The mayor knows better than anyone city hall doesn't have many options at budget time. Unlike the province and Ottawa, it has to balance a budget every year. Unlike the province and Ottawa, it only has access to a limited pool of revenue sources.

Canadian cities have been struggling to maintain services and fix crumbling facilities for decades. Some have been forced to raise property taxes above the rate of inflationevery year just to maintain their existing levels of mediocrity.

Winnipeg doesn't do that. Here, every budget season is a tough budget season. And yes, city department directors cry the sky is falling almost every budget season as well.

They just used to do it in a manner that didn't scare the heck out of thepublic for no reason other than to soften up the blow of budget cuts later on.