Were community centres better off before Winnipeg joined?

I was at the "Transcona Roland Mitchner Arena.community centre" thingy over the weeked. They have a big sign up showing how they got the funds to build and the naming and such.

Its an okay building. Has an indoor arena, dance studio, gymnastics studio, a skating club operates out of there and the arena can actually hold quite a number of spectators. I dont know if it still does, but when it was built one of its purposes was to be the transcona museum too.
But lets get back to the funding. They actually instituted an additional property tax to pay for it. To exceed no more then 8 mills.
There is a novel idea eh? Special projects being approved by the populace and added on to the tax bills. Instead of just willy nilly approval by council and taking from general revenues or spread out amongst the populace as whole instead of just the community impacted.
How come we do special mill rates for crap like improving sidewalks and shite.. but nothing at all for special projects like Museums, or football stadiums or new/updated CCs?
Were individual CCs far better off before almagamation? Were areas better served because they could figure out what they wanted and decide to build it instead of needing entire city approval?

Plebiscites. You're talking plebiscites. And assigning a special tax levy to fund something the area homeowners voted for in a plebiscite is a grand idea. I will vote for Deank when and if he runs for mayor...

Exactly.

the again.. what use are plebiscites if their results are ignored.
At the U of M in the Max Bell centre. they have a sign up there too.
They state that when the building was going to be built UMSU asked the students if they wanted to support it financially or not. They gave $300 to the YES side and $300 to the NO side. The NO side won. But UMSU overturned the results because the NO side could not provide financial information and it was suspected they spent more then $300 limit.
Hows that for crazy heh? The populace voted against it. But the leaders decided to fund it anyway.

The state of our community centres is probably a direct product of Winnipeg previously being several separate entities. As each separate municipal government did their own thing, particularly in terms of infrastructure, "Unicity" inherited a whole whack of buildings which they have been unable to adequately maintain over the years and since there was a community centre on every block (exaggeration for effect), as the city grew, that pattern continued into new developments.

So what we have now is many city buildings scattered all over, the upkeep of which is being forced upon some willing and probably naive, but otherwise overworked volunteers, who spend much of their time on administrative tasks, but little on actual programs and "community building'.

We read much of the plight of Ralph Brown Communtiy Centre which is, according to my Sherlock's map, less than 750 meters from the St John's Leisure Centre, a civic facility, fully staffed by civic employees, and approximately 500 meters from the old North End Y which is currently under construction.