AMM motion targets derelict buildings

A City of Brandon resolution to help municipalities with the cost of maintaining and demolishing derelict buildings is set to be debated today at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) fall convention.

Brandon, the Rural Municipality of Riding Mountain West and the City of Thompson are the municipalities sponsoring the motion. Municipal delegates will vote on the resolution today. If approved, it would go to the Manitoba municipal and northern relations department, which would issue a response early next year.

Currently, when buildings are abandoned and become unsafe, costs to maintain safety or demolish the building fall on the municipality.

“With some of these derelict properties — and there’s not a lot of them — there can be costs to clean up, and they can be stuck on the municipality,” Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, Brandon had 12 buildings that have been permitted through the city’s vacant and derelict building bylaw. Most of those buildings are residential. Another 14 are currently in some level of enforcement, or the city is working on a solution, the city’s building safety manager, Murray Fischer, told the Sun.

“If people just walk away from their properties and out of the taxation laws, we actually end up with the costly cleanups, and often, taking them down,” Fawcett said.

“We just wanted to see if the province can play a more significant role prior to it getting to that point, or assisting in the cleanups.”

He said it isn’t currently a “massively big issue,” but it is a concern and a cost when the city is the one footing the bill.

The resolution calls for the province to establish legislative penalties “for property owners who abandon or neglect properties to avoid financial responsibilities and liabilities,” and to provide financial help for municipalities that are removing or repairing derelict and contaminated properties. It also calls on the province to streamline the current process for addressing the matter in the Municipal Act.

Fawcett said the changes, like legislative penalties, would have to be decided by the province.

Fischer said the “ballpark” cost on the city over abandoned and derelict buildings this year is just over $10,000.

The city’s resolution to the AMM has been a “very critical issue” with the department, he added.

“It is a major issue in Brandon because we have some buildings that are quite large and it would be just too cost-prohibitive for the city to take on our own,” Fischer said. “Even to put the cost on taxes would just be a near-impossible task to undertake.”

“Certainly, any help from the province would be instrumental in addressing the issue.”

The problem “is easing a little bit” over the last five years, Fischer said.

In late 2023, the city changed its bylaw to make it easier to compel property owners to demolish or rehabilitate buildings. Fischer said that has helped.

“It’s allowed us to be more proactive. We started actually going through downtown neighbourhoods, looking for potential vacant and boarded properties and dealt with them proactively.”

Riding Mountain West Reeve Grant Boryskavich said there has been a problem of homeowners leaving their buildings in town go to waste, instead prioritizing their cabin near the lake. The buildings in Inglis then have to be cleaned up by the RM, he said, which has to be funded through tax dollars.

“We don’t want the municipality taxpayers … to be on the hook for cleaning up these buildings,” Boryskavich told the Sun on Wednesday.

He said the abandoned homes and businesses makes the town “look kind of in shambles.”

It’s a “big, long process” to take the buildings down, which often costs in the tens of thousands of dollars per building, the reeve said. Older buildings can be even more expensive, even reaching into the $100,000 range when a building’s asbestos needs to be removed first.

Having the buildings cleaned up is important, he said, so the community can move forward without fire traps.

The number of buildings that become derelict in the RM varies year by year, and can be anywhere from zero to three.

Boryskavich said there should be penalties for people who let their buildings go to waste.

“You can’t just walk away from a building, leave it in tax sale for the rest of the municipality to clean it up, and you’re walking away with, you know, with no regards for what you’ve done,” he said.

Nick Krawetz, AMM’s deputy executive director, said a majority of resolutions presented at the fall convention are passed, but some do get rejected after debate.

He said having resolutions at the convention is “fundamental.” The debates and votes draw about 700 voting delegates including mayors, reeves, councillors and chief administrative officers.

“The process is very important to our operations and advocacy,” Krawetz said. “It’s a grassroots process where all members have a voice and they can bring forth their concerns, their priorities, challenges, opportunities to the broader delegated body for consideration and debate.”

Manitoba has 137 municipalities.

Municipalities debated and passed resolutions at the district level before they came to the AMM convention.

» alambert@brandonsun.com