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Winnipeg city council will meet Thursday for its final meeting before its summer break, and the second-last regular meeting before October’s civic election.<\/p>\n
One item expected to draw discussion is a proposed change to the capital budget that would have taken money away from the city\u2019s tree planting program.<\/p>\n
The Manitoba government told the city to shift $1.2 million in strategic infrastructure basket funding to the Assiniboine Park Zoo’s Journey to Churchill exhibit.<\/p>\n
To offset that change, city administrators had recommended reducing this year’s urban forest renewal program by the same amount, delaying some planned tree planting while keeping the overall capital budget unchanged.<\/p>\n
But after the proposal drew public criticism, Mayor Scott Gillingham announced last week he would introduce a motion aimed at preserving the full 2026 tree planting budget.<\/p>\n
In a news release on June 9, Gillingham said \u201cWinnipeggers care deeply\u201d about the urban forest, and \u201cthe public wants this tree planting funding protected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor said he would bring forward a plan at the council meeting to do that.<\/p>\n
The city report going to council says the province required the funding change and that it does not reflect a change in the city’s own capital priorities. The additional money for the Assiniboine Park Conservancy would fund infrastructure upgrades at the Journey to Churchill exhibit, including filtration and mechanical improvements.<\/p>\n
This is the second time in less than a year the province has told the city to redirect money it had already budgeted. In late 2025, the Manitoba government reallocated $5.5 million that had been planned for road safety and spray pad improvements, and a Waverley West fire paramedic station. The money was redirected toward an animal hospital at Assiniboine Park the St. Boniface Museum.<\/p>\n
Council will meet only one other time, on Sept. 24, before the election on Oct. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-805541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}