After years of planning and delays, Winkler’s wastewater treatment facility project has finally gone to tender.
Mayor Henry Siemens shared the news with business leaders in his state of the city address, delivered last Thursday at the Winkler and District Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting.
“We’ve just sent the biggest project Winkler has ever done, a budgeted $50 million wastewater treatment plant, to tender,” Siemens said. “It’s been a long time coming. We thought at times that we’d never get here, and now all we can do is cross our fingers and wait.”
The project was paused two years ago after bids came in significantly higher than originally budgeted.
“Over the last several years, numbers coming in have been scary because they’ve been hugely over budget. No matter what we did, it was way over budget,” Siemens lamented. “We’re optimistic that everything that we’ve done, everything we’ve mitigated, everything we’ve learned over the last two years gets us to a place that this will come in very close to the numbers that we have for it.”
In an interview after the speech, Siemens noted they have a five-week tender process for the project, after which time council and city staff will review the bids with an eye to hopefully giving the green light to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible this year.
It’s one of three major projects on the city’s radar for 2024.
“Our water treatment plant [expansion] tender closed yesterday,” Siemens said. “Staff are reviewing the numbers right now to see what they exactly look like, but very early indications, [it’s] much closer to what we would expect. We’re in the vicinity of where we need to be.”
The city hopes to select and approve the winning bid at this week’s council meeting. The project has been estimated to cost approximately $14 million.
Once the numbers for these two necessary infrastructure undertakings are known, attention can then turn to the planned renovations for the Winkler Centennial Arena.
“We still hope that we’ll be able to send that project out this year as well, but we needed cost certainty around these two first,” the mayor said, noting afterwards that, assuming the first two projects come in as budgeted, the renos meant to update the aging arena could get underway shortly after the Winkler Flyers’ hockey season is complete this spring.
While these projects are top of mind at the city right now, they are by no means the only things going on in Winkler these days, Siemens noted.
Based on the results of last year’s transit feasibility study, the community is moving forward on plans to offer a subsidized ride program later this year.
“This is an affordable, dip-your-toe-in-the-water first step on the transit continuum,” Siemens said. “We will offer a unique way for people to get from place to place in Winkler at a cost that everyone can afford.
“We’ll learn there where our greatest transit needs are so that we can use that data to move on to the next step when it’s time to do so.”
Siemens also highlighted a few of the city’s community partnerships, including working with the Winkler Community Foundation on a new Vital Signs survey to provide a detailed snapshot of Winkler’s demographics and needs, and its ongoing support of the work of Central Station and Central Community Homes.
“These types of community partnerships are critical to Winkler’s future,” he said. “We know that in a rapidly growing community like Winkler, not everyone always benefits equally from that growth. These organizations take a leadership role in finding out who’s missing out, connecting other service providers, and helping ensure that the people who might be looking to progress are supported.”
The need for more affordable housing remains constant, the mayor said, sharing that an application to the province for funding for a project to address those needs has been submitted and they’re hoping for approval any day now.
On the tax front, Siemens reflected that many communities across the country are seeing massive increases to keep up with basic civic needs.
He pointed to Brandon, which recently received a report outlining the need for a 13 per cent increase a year for the next four years or a nine per cent increase annually for the next decade simply to keep the city operating.
Part of the problem, Siemens noted, has been frozen or decreased financial support from the upper levels of government.
“Most cities and towns have determined that they would like a greater level of service in their community than what’s offered, so they’ve topped it up, similar to how we’ve funded the capital expansion of the Boundary Trails Health Centre and the Winkler and District Health Care Board’s purchase of [the Winkler clinic] building.
“We can’t keep going to local taxpayers for these services, services that should be funded by Manitoba and Canada,” Siemens stressed. “Municipalities receive about ten cents of every tax dollar, but we’re responsible for 60 per cent of all public infrastructure. That math doesn’t work. It’s a system ripe for collapse.
“All of us need to rethink how the more senior orders of government fund municipalities and how they share the additional taxes that are generated in a growing economy,” he said, noting they’ve have some fruitful discussions with the new NDP provincial government and there is room for optimism that municipalities will again see constant, inflation-adjusted financial support once again moving forward.
Winkler currently is in better shape than other communities that are struggling for funds, in part, Siemens said, thanks to the long-term planning of past councils coupled with the fact that much of our infrastructure is relatively new.
“Winkler’s population has doubled in the last 25 years,” he pointed out. “That means half the stuff we have is almost new. In large-scale infrastructure, 25 years isn’t even a teenager yet. That gives us more time to save, to fund major repairs or replacements.
“For the past five years, with the exception of the 2021 COVID year, we’ve set budgets through this lens of long-term sustainability, meaning we’ve significantly increased our reserve contributions,” Siemens said.
They’ve done this while also focusing on other sources of potential revenue, he said, and cutting unnecessary costs while still offering the level of service the community requires.
Winkler’s detailed asset management plans shows the community has approximately $500 million worth of physical assets, which comes with about $380 million in renewal costs in the decades to come.
“As we continue to dig deeper and deeper into the details of what we have, its age, and anticipated replacement date, we’re finding that we have a deficit of about five per cent in our ability to fund it,” Siemens said, stressing again the importance of growing the reserve fund to ensure future generations aren’t hit with a massive tax increase to pay for it all. “We’re working with our staff to gradually increase our savings to help us get there.”
To that end, Siemens announced Winklerites can expect a tax increase in the upcoming budget.
“Council sees a need to set tax rates slightly above the rate of inflation for the next few years. This year, that looks like a five per cent increase,” he said. “We take very seriously the responsibility of managing the money that we ask of you through taxes. It is never an easy decision to ask you for more, but we firmly believe that to be good stewards of all that Winkler is and can be, now is the time to make that difficult ask of you.”
Taxpayers will have the chance to see and weigh-in on the full financial plan at the March 26 council meeting.
Siemens also announced that community members can voice their concerns about what’s going on in Winkler with a new monthly feature happening at City Hall called Ask the Mayor.
Starting March 5, the community is invited to stop by council chambers the first Tuesday of every month from 4-6 p.m. to chat with city council members and senior city staffers.
Siemens said they hope this will encourage people to come have their say in a less formal environment.
“Nothing is off limits. If you have something to say, we want to hear it,” he said. “There’s no agenda, there’s no time [limits]. It’s just an opportunity to talk. If you have something to ask, come by and ask it.”
