Deliberations set stage for lengthy discussions today

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This article was published 25/01/2025 (257 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s plans for equipment and fleet replacement, along with questions over new staffing hires, will be on the table today when city councillors reconvene for their second day of deliberations over Brandon’s proposed 2025 budget.

Following several lengthy presentations by City of Brandon department heads on Friday that were heavy with details — and peppered with questions from around the table — end-of-day comments by several councillors suggested budget discussions today will be rather intense, particularly regarding the reserves, and the budgeted plans to buy new equipment and replace fleet vehicles.

“I think it’s going to be a very hard discussion because there’s still a bit of a difference of opinion amongst councillors when we start talking about reserves,” Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) told the Sun Friday afternoon.

Berry, who has previously questioned the need to deplete city reserves in the same year that council pours money into them, says plans for equipment purchases need to be better staggered, so taxpayers take less of a hit this year, but also so that future councils do not also bear the same burdens of large fleet replacements all at once.

“There’s still some who are firm that we do not touch the reserves, we do not change them, we do not do anything. We just follow the administration’s advice and go that route. And there’s others of us that think … we can still accomplish the same goal, just in a different way, and get to where we need to be and save a little bit of money for the taxpayer.”

The City of Brandon’s proposed 2025 budget includes an 11.7 per cent increase in property taxes, with the increase expected to help shore up the city’s financial reserves and fund various infrastructure development and ongoing maintenance projects.

As part of the proposed budget, there were numerous items brought forward by department heads as action items for the coming year.

For example, the city’s public works department plans to install camera systems in all sanitation collection vehicles in the community that will be operated by artificial intelligence, as a means to detect contamination in recycle bins.

“When we’re collecting the blue bins … if there’s contamination with that bin, it contaminates the entire load in the vehicle,” operations manager Patrick Pulak told council during his Friday morning presentation. “So what this camera does, it will actually monitor what’s going into the truck from those bins, and then it senses that contamination and makes it known where it happened.”

Bus refurbishment was also a topic of discussion, as Brandon’s director of Transit, Carla Richardson, confirmed the administration’s plan to refit 15 buses into 2025 and 2026. Five buses have already been sent away for refurbishment. The problem, she said is that there have been significant delays.

“The companies that are doing the refurbishment are reporting regularly on what they’re finding, and it’s not good,” Richardson said. “They originally estimated eight to 12 weeks for repair, and it has extended into the end of January, early February for us to get the first two back.”

One of the major issues are damaged wiring harnesses for at least a few of the buses, which, due to the age of the vehicles, are no longer easily replaced. As a result, another company has had to find the same components, and recreate them from scratch.

“What this has really taught us is that it is essential to stick to the replacement cycles of the vehicles and equipment,” Richardson said. “We missed the mid-life refurbishment in 2019 and 202o, and it’s caught up to us.”

Other large projects slated to move forward in the 2025 proposed budget include the retendering of the water treatment facility upgrade, the 18th Street lift station construction, pre-treatment facility upgrades, and as required by the province, water sampling and testing for lead in certain areas of the city will be expanded.

“While this is not a major health issue, it is certainly something that we need to investigate and address,” said Mark Allard, the city’s general manager of development services during his presentation.

Allard also said zoning updates would be likely moving forward to further implement Brandon’s City Plan.

One of the larger discussions of the day centred around the Brandon Police Service, and its plans to both hire a new staff psychologist to help with staff wellness and mental health, and the implementation of a new in-house run recruitment class to help address staffing needs more quickly.

As late as last November, BPS was looking to hire up to 20 new officers to augment its ranks, and even started offering paid training plus a $12,500 signing incentive for recruits who made the cut.

In his presentation on Friday, Brandon police Chief Tyler Bates said the force was anticipating graduating six individuals from the new recruit class this coming March, with the prospect of training yet another six in May.

Coun. Greg Hildebrand (Ward 5) questioned what the advantage was to BPS to offer an in-house recruit course, rather than having it go through the regular training courses offered by Assiniboine College.

Chief Bates said that because BPS was in “immediate” need of new recruits, they opted to hire someone out of retirement to train new recruits in a shorter time frame than the eight to 10-month time frame offered through the current Assiniboine curriculum.

“You know, just about every police agency in Canada has shorter training programs than that,” he said.

“The RCMP has six and a half months, and the OPP (Ontario) has four months. Ten months is a long time to have boots on the ground, and it doesn’t meet our immediate needs.”

Though Bates defended the need for a staff psychologist for BPS to meet the needs, Coun. Shaun Cameron (Ward 4) noted that there is currently a shortage of trained psychologists in Manitoba, and that it could be potentially years for a new hire to be found.

“I’m just wondering … would we be better to allocate further funds to support sort of current clean industry people as opposed to hopefully finding a psychologist that might be able to fill that position in the new term?” Cameron said.

“I have had preliminary conversations with people in the industry,” said BPS Insp. Jason Dupuis, who spoke to the issue at council. “They don’t want to commit one way or another, but there is a sense that there might be people in the industry that work for private enterprise who might be interested in working for us.”

Last month, BPS reported that it planned to move forward with a sizable investment to introduce the use of body cameras in routine policing throughout the Wheat City. Bates told the Sun in December that the force intended to implement the technological upgrades by fall of 2025, with an initial allocation of $400,000 for the project.

Bates was asked by Hildebrand whether the body camera project could be delayed or phased in with a partial cost recovery this year and then next year.

“Absolutely I do think that’s something that should be considered,” Bates said. “We were already looking at the late fall implementation, given the timelines for training … So if we end up in as little as a two or three-month delay with respect to the signing of this document, that’s going to put this into 2026 as far as implementation.”

Among other potential hires for the city was the planned search for a new internal communications officer position to “enhance communication within the city.”

Berry suggested that these kinds of hires should also be discussed today, as the need for some new positions may outweigh others.

“There were some that they’re proposing that I’ve changed my mind about, saying, OK, yeah, we really do need to do this now. But there’s a few others that, with everything we’ve got going on this year, this isn’t a necessity for this year, it can wait.”

In speaking with the Sun, Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said he expected further discussions around hiring, fleet purchases and city reserves and noted that they need to happen around the council table today.

But he also said that council received some good news on Friday, as the provincial government announced it would be contributing $1 million to support renovations and upgrades to the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium in Brandon.

“We had requested going to the province for a half a million dollars for capital this year, and we have in our budget essentially half a million dollars for the other half of that capital,” Fawcett said. “As of right now, the province is going to cover the whole year’s capital in there and that has a direct impact on this year’s budget, because we won’t collect about $500,000.”

Budget deliberations will continue in council chambers this morning, starting at 8:30 a.m. City residents can also follow the presentations and deliberations on the City of Brandon’s YouTube Channel. WCGtv will also livestream the event on its website.

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

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