Twenty-Year Wait for a Curb Fix in Winnipeg? It's Unacceptable

Imagine being told by your city that a broken curb in front of your house might get fixed—if you're lucky—by 2045. That’s what one Winnipeg resident was told after reporting long-standing curb damage near his driveway. It wasn’t a mistake. The city confirmed the timeline is accurate: non-hazardous curb damage will take about 20 years to repair.

Two decades.

This isn’t a one-off. When I was a city councillor, it was routine to receive calls from residents who’d been given timelines of 15 to 25 years for minor repairs—curbs, back lanes, sidewalks. People would laugh at first, assuming it was a joke. It wasn’t. It still isn’t.

And yet, taxes keep going up.

Mayor Gillingham just raised property taxes by nearly 6%, the largest increase in over a decade. Once you tack on the new waste collection fee, water rate hikes, and additional water charges, you're well past the 3.5% increase he promised during the election. He told us the hikes were necessary “to get things done.”

Apparently, “getting things done” doesn’t include curbs, sidewalks, or the most basic maintenance for residents who are paying more every year.

If there’s no money or resources to fix a curb in less than two decades, we need to ask some serious questions. Where is the money going? What are we funding? And how many layers of city bureaucracy are standing between the problem and the solution?

Let’s start with the basics: city government is supposed to provide services. Patching potholes, clearing sidewalks, and maintaining infrastructure. That’s not extra—that’s the job.

But instead of performance, we get excuses. Instead of transparency, we get inflationary spending. Instead of value for money, we get 20-year timelines and tax increases that never seem to end.

The truth is, no one on this city council—certainly not mayor Gillingham—has had the will to challenge the city’s spending structure. No one has taken a hard look at staffing, at department efficiency, or at management bloat.

How many people are doing the actual work? How many are supervising? How many are buried in middle or upper management, collecting six-figure salaries while curb repairs are pushed 20 years into the future?

It’s time to get serious.

We need to stop rubber-stamping budget increases and start demanding answers. A proper zero-based budget review would do just that. It means starting from scratch, not assuming every dollar in last year’s budget needs to be there again this year. Every department justifies every expense, from the ground up. It’s a process used by companies around the world—businesses that can’t just raise revenue with a vote or pass costs onto taxpayers.

In fact, cities like Phoenix, Arizona, used zero-based budgeting to identify millions in savings and reallocate money to actual service delivery. Dublin, Ohio—comparable in population to parts of Winnipeg—used the approach to rein in ballooning administrative costs and reinvest in infrastructure. It works when done properly.

Zero-based budgeting would force a real audit of city expenses. It would put the focus back on services and away from administrative self-preservation. No more hiding behind the phrase “we don’t have the resources.” Let’s see exactly where the resources are going—and if they’re getting results.

Because right now, they’re not.

The approach to budgeting at City Hall is broken. It’s the same song every year: departments ask for more, council agrees, and taxpayers are told it's necessary. But necessary for what? Certainly not for timely curb repairs. Not for snow clearing that actually keeps streets safe. Not for back lane grading or sidewalk maintenance.

People don’t expect perfection. They expect fairness. They expect their money to be respected. Right now, it isn’t.

This isn’t about one broken curb. It’s about priorities. It's about a system where service delivery is an afterthought, and residents are left to fill holes themselves—literally—while the bureaucracy grows and spending increases year after year.

If a city government can’t even manage basic maintenance, what exactly are we paying for?

And don't say “there’s no money.” There is. The city just passed its biggest property tax increase in a generation. But the money isn’t reaching the ground. It’s getting swallowed up in layers of management and inefficiency. There’s no transparency. No performance metrics. No accountability.

Winnipeggers are resourceful. When told the city wouldn’t fix the curb, the homeowner made a temporary fix himself—again. Now he’s talking about hiring his friends to do it properly. At his own cost. On top of the taxes he already pays.

That’s the growing attitude in Winnipeg. People don’t trust the city to do its job, so they’re doing it themselves. But that’s not sustainable, and it’s not how a city should operate.

Council needs to act. Not by forming a committee or hiring another consultant. Act by getting serious about cost reviews. Act by taking a scalpel to unnecessary spending. Act by implementing zero-based budgeting. Act by making service—not salaries—the focus.

City Hall should be working for the people who pay the bills. That’s not happening.

No one should wait 20 years for a curb to be fixed. No one should be told to just accept it. And no mayor should raise taxes while defending a status quo that clearly isn’t working.

You can’t keep asking people to pay more and accept less.

That’s not leadership. That’s surrender.

Let’s stop pretending everything is fine. Let’s stop asking for more. Let’s start fixing what’s broken—with the money already on the table.

Because it’s your money. You deserve better.