Provincial budget garners reaction from Mayor de Groot

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Published on Friday, May 8, 2015

By Eoin Devereux

The Neepawa Banner

Neepawa Mayor Adrian de Groot was hoping to see a few more highlights for rural Manitoba in the provincial government’s new budget. The governing NDP tabled a $15-billion budget on Thursday, Apr. 30, which featured a billion dollars in infrastructure money that’s focused primarily around areas near Winnipeg, Brandon and northern Manitoba. It also included modest spending increases in health care and education. No significant spending allocations for Neepawa and the surrounding area were mentioned.

After taking some time to review the numbers, De Groot said that this appeared to be a budget that does not provide much direct assistance to our portion of the province. He also lamented  that one item many municipal leaders have been calling for, which wasn’t present, was a commitment to ensure a portion of the provincial sales tax is dedicated to municipal infrastructure. De Groot noted that lack of commitment is disappointing.

“I didn’t see anything that really addressed some of the concerns that municipalities have, not only in Neepawa but other municipalities. One of the biggest items, obviously is infrastructure. Municipalities have been lobbying the provincial government to take a share of the provincial sales tax and commit that,” said de Groot. “Whether it starts with one per cent or two per cent of the sales tax redirected to the municipalities for basically towards projects like infrastructure.”

Another issue de Groot felt deserved more attention from the provincial budget was the removal of the education tax from property taxes. 

“That could have been a move that would put more money in the local economy and have more deposable income, as far as ratepayers are concerned. At one point, there was an effort to go 90 per cent province and 10 per cent local. I think the Association of Manitoba Municipalities  have changed that to 80-20 per cent, but certainly, we could have looked forward to something like that but that wasn’t even in there,” added de Groot. 

Overall, de Groot felt this was budget that perhaps showed the province government was running out of new ideas.

“I think municipalities in general were looking forward to perhaps some new things, new ideas. Some innovative things that can work together,” said de Groot. “I see this as a tired budget. I think it’s reflective of where the current government is. You know, they’ve done it so many times that it seems to be nothing new that they can come up with.”