CHAPTER 15 — MUNICIPAL EXPENDITURES, 1946–1956

Making due allowance for the difference in their respective populations, the operating expenditures of the City of Winnipeg have always been higher, by a considerable margin, than those of the suburban municipalities. In 1946 the per capita operating expenditure of the City was $52.74, while the suburban figure was $29.90; by 1956, the Winnipeg figure had risen to $98.40, and the suburban figure to $59.46.

For this substantial and continuing difference in per capita operating costs, a number of factors are responsible. The chief ones are the following:

1. Winnipeg contains many industrial and commercial firms, and their presence imposes heavy costs.
2. Winnipeg contains large, old, deteriorated residential districts, which produce serious problems and impose heavy costs.
3. Winnipeg bears, alone, the financial burden of major facilities which serve the whole metropolitan area.
4. The fact that Winnipeg is surrounded by the suburban municipalities is responsible for increasng the costs of some Winnipeg services.

1. The Presence of Numerous Industrial and Commercial Firms

The chief shopping district, and the bulk of Greater Winnipeg's industrial and commercial establishments are located in the City and their presence imposes a variety of substantial costs.

The concentration of business buildings requires the maintenance by the City of a large and well-equipped Fire Department, capable of protecting the numerous and valuable business properties. Because of their size, and in some cases because of the nature of the work carried on in them, the protection of business buildings against fire requires specialized and costly equipment and highly trained men; because they are exposed to greater peril in fighting fires which break out in business buildings, Winnipeg firemen furthermore must receive more pay than suburban firemen who may be called upon to deal only with the less hazardous fires which occur in dwellings. Thus the presence of many business firms obliges the City of Winnipeg to maintain a substantially larger, better trained, better equipped, higher paid force of firefighters than would be needed if dwellings only had to be protected. Homeowners derive some benefit of course from the presence of a larger fire fighting force, since it is available to fight residential fires too; the gain is not appreciable, however, since most residential fires can be handled with relatively few men and simple equipment.

The presence of numerous business establishments gives rise as well to numerous and diversified police problems, and therefore requires the maintenance by the City of a large, well-trained police force. The cash and valuable merchandise handled by business firms invites the attention of criminals, while the heavy traffic to and from the business areas requires extensive traffic control operations, involving a large number of personnel.

The heavy traffic on its thoroughfares requires the City to spend large sums on the maintenance or widening of its streets and on heavier, costlier pavement. In winter, snow must be removed from the downtown areas speedily, thoroughly, and at considerable cost. The abrasives used in ice control, in turn contribute to the need for extensive street cleaning operations in the spring.

Business firms produce extra costs of garbage disposal and street cleaning: they generate usually more garbage than do householders; some of this comes to litter the streets, thereby requiring additional street cleaning.

Because of the large number of people frequenting or patronizing the business establishments, comprehensive health and building inspections must be carried on, to ensure the security and health of the public, and the City is therefore obliged to maintain a large staff of inspectors whose primary concern is with the sanitation and structural security of business buildings.

2. Deteriorated Residential Districts

The presence of another type of building contributes to Winnipeg's high operating costs. Because the City was first to be extensively settled, it contains large districts, particularly in the central area, characterized by old dwellings in poor condition. Inevitably these houses have become occupied by low income families, among whom the incidence is high of welfare, health and police problems which must be handled by the civic authorities.

3. Metropolitan Facilities Maintained by Winnipeg Alone

Half a century ago, before most of the present day suburbs were in existence, the City of Winnipeg developed, for the benefit of its citizens, two major parks just outside the City limits, and built, within the City, the King Edward hospital for tuberculosis patients, (1) and the King George hospital for the treatment of persons suffering from communicable diseases. These facilities were built expressly for the benefit of the citizens of Winnipeg, but the people who moved into the present suburban municipalities, after the latter came into being, were able to use these facilities on an equal basis with citizens of Winnipeg. Persons who live outside the metropolitan area altogether have equally free access to the pars and may be admitted, to the hospitals.

The cost of operating these facilities, comprised of the cost of maintaining the parks, and the operating deficits incurred by the hospitals, has always been borne, however, solely by the City of Winnipeg. Since the end of World War II, the City has constructed additional facilities of a metropolitan character, which are not fully self-supporting financially, and whose deficits are borne by the City. These include the Football Stadium, the Winnipeg Arena and the Queen Elizabeth hospital for chronically ill patients.

4. Winnipeg Surrounded by Suburban Development

Because the City covers a large area, and because it has become encircled by a broad band of suburban development, its costs of garbage disposal are high. The relatively costly method of incineration must be used, partly because the distance now intervening between the City and potential dumping grounds causes the cos of haulage to such grounds to be high.

The fact that the City occupies a physically central position in the metropolitan area contributes to the weight of traffic on its thoroughfares, as movement from one suburb to another proceeds through the City. Furthermore, the fact that all bridges over the two rivers in Greater Winnipeg are located in Winnipeg, means that suburban residents who wish to travel to another suburb which crosses a river, must go through Winnipeg.

Suburban Municipal Operating Costs

The operating costs of suburban municipalities have been ,adn are still today, substantially lower than those of Winnipeg. Three primary factors are responsible. Firstly, the suburbs are free of many of the problems which exist i the City of Winnipeg, and cause its operating costs to be high. Secondly, some of the services which they have are maintained by the City of Winnipeg, and available to them without cost. Thirdly, the suburban municipal corporations have in general provided a narrower range and a lower quality of services to their residents than has the City of Winnipeg.

(a) Absence of Winnipeg's Problems

The suburbs, being primarily residential, do not have the problems of fire and police protection which are produced by the presence of large industrial and commercial firms. In several suburbs, however, there has been a considerable expansion of industry in recent years, and have consequently such problems are developing, with consequent increase in local fire and police protection costs. Because these buildings are new, however, the fire hazard is much lower in them than in Winnipeg's much older commercial and industrial buidings.

Relatively small and simply equipped fire departments are adequate to protect suburbs comprised almost exclusively of or two storey dwellings. Similarly, relatively small police forces are adequate to handle the chiefly routine police matters that develop in residential districts, occupied by persons of average or better than average income. The lighter flow of traffic requires less elaborate measures of traffic control, and fewer personnel for the purpose. On the other hand, some suburban municipalities contain long stretches of heavily-travelled highways, and are obliged to devote considerable police time to the task of patrolling.

Since the majority of suburban homes are relatively new, and since business premises are relatively few, the problems and costs of health inspection and control are relatively small. Again, because suburban homes are mostly new and include relatively few in the slum class, the incidence of social welfare problems is relatively low. (1) Because the suburbs contain suitable undeveloped land, or are near to such land, they are able to dispose of garbage by the relatively inexpensive method of cut and fill i.e. burying it in the ground or, as some do, by simply dumping it on the ground and burying it.

(b) Free Use of Facilities Maintained by Winnipeg

The proximity of the suburbs to Winnipeg enables them to obtain, free, the benefits of facilities built and maintained by Winnipeg. Thus suburban residents are able to use Winnipeg's parks, its streets and bridges, its municipal hospitals, without contributing to their cost. The presence in Winnipeg of a large and well equipped Fire Department provides security to the suburbs against the danger of a conflagration which would be beyond the resources of their local fire fighting forces. The presence in Winnipeg of a large, well-equipped, well trained police force similarly serves the suburban municipalities, by ensuring that necessary assistance and support will be promptly forthcoming when a situation develops which strains the capacity of any suburban police force. Winnipeg residents are able, of course, to make free use of suburban facilities, but the balance of advantage lies very definitely with residents of the suburbs.

(c) Fewer Municipal Services in the Suburbs

Finally, suburban municipalities do not generally provide their citizens with the same range of services as is provided by the municipal authorities of Winnipeg. Suburban school districts do not operate kindergartens, or a technical vocational school as does Winnipeg; suburban school children do not receive free text-books; (1) suburban school teachers are on the whole less well paid, and have lower technical qualifications than do Winnipeg teachers. Until recently no suburban municipality maintained a public library. The Winnipeg Board of Parks and Recreation provides a multiplicity of services, which are unmatched in the suburbs.

It should be noted however that in recent years, suburban municipalities have increased the range and quality of their services, bringing them closer into line with those provided by Winnipeg. The gap between teachers' salary schedules in the City and the suburbs has been closed. Within the pas eight years four suburbs and have opened public libraries. All the larger suburbs have undertaken major street and sidewalk paving programs; garbage is now collected more frequently; fire and police forces have been strengthened and provided with better equipment; snow removal operations are carried out more promptly and more comprehensively than was the case a few years ago.