City cuts to recreation programming will cost Winnipeg more than closed pools
While Mayor Brian Bowman scrambles to save a $400 million hotel, housing and retail complex fronted by True North to further revitalize downtown, everything could come unravelled by a much smaller move that the city administration is floating at the same time.
The proposal to cut $1 million from the city’s budget by closing inner city wading pools and recreation centres could be far more costly to downtown’s future than hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new buildings.
There is a definite need to connect the dots—or dollars—here. We ignore the impact these two items have on each other at our peril.
A city’s downtown is a major measuring stick of its vitality. And yes, Winnipeg has come a long way from the blocks of boarded-up storefronts along Portage Avenue. There have been many exciting developments—such as the MTS Centre, the Avenue Building and revitalized Metropolitan Theatre—which will soon be joined by the new look convention centre, a new police headquarters and developments proposed in and around our city’s arena.
Denied opportunity
But we cannot forget that the roots of crime, under-education and poverty are often found in childhood, which has been denied opportunity.
When you deprive children and youth of the simplest pleasures, like a cool pool on a blistering hot Winnipeg summer day, or a place for sports and recreation, they are going to find other things to do. Some of those things conflict with the rest of our society and our justice system.
What is the constant complaint people have about going downtown? They are afraid of violence and crime. Humans aren’t born criminals, and the way to prevent young people from going down that dark path is to start at an early age. You don’t do that by denying basic opportunities to people who otherwise have no opportunities at all.
A divided, unequal city is a dangerous place that good people don’t want to live in. It doesn’t make sense to close recreational facilities to save a million dollars while police and firefighter budgets continue to rise.
One out of every three children in Manitoba lives below the poverty line, and you will find many of those children in Winnipeg’s downtown and inner city neighbourhoods. Aboriginal children in this city face a lot of challenges, and this should not include finding a place to play or to simply cool off.
Maclean’s magazine recently painted a horrific portrait of Winnipeg’s downtown, with intoxicated residents stumbling around, abandoned children getting high on solvents and others selling their bodies for drugs.
It is doubtful you are going to find all of these behaviours going on in the same place at the same time, but isolated incidents here and there downtown are enough to undo the best of concrete intentions.
All because some kid’s parents can’t afford an air conditioner and there is no wading pool to cool off in?
Reduction in programming
The city proposals include a reduction in hours and programming at five indoor pools, closing and decommissioning 30 wading pools, shutting the St. John's Leisure Centre and East End Cultural and Leisure Centre, closing three outdoor pools and the indoor one the city operates in Bernie Wolfe Community School.
That million-dollar cut has wide ranging impacts.
The good news, of course, is that budget cutbacks like this are often thrown out to see what reaction they get, and if there is a lot of opposition, the monies are put back in the budget.
Bowman is now denying the cuts have been proposed in the budget documents the city distributed to councillors with instructions “not to discuss with anyone.”
It’s not the $500,000 the city will save this year or a million a year thereafter that is important. It is the big picture or puzzle that is downtown revitalization that all has to fit together.
Bowman responded to the Maclean’s claim that Winnipeg is the most racist city in Canada by saying this might provide an opportunity to begin dealing with our racial divide. His budget plan to close inner-city recreational facilities is totally contrary to that.
The city’s next budget will set a tone for the future. It must respond to the needs of the city’s indigenous citizens, especially those struggling with poverty.
Even just proposing cuts to recreational programming and facilities that will have devastating effects on many at-risk neighbourhoods is not the way to start.
Don Marks is the Editor of Grassroots News