City OKs proposal to change wards

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This article was published 20/04/2022 (1619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon City Council made a couple of tweaks before approving proposed changes to the names and boundaries of the city’s electoral wards on Tuesday night.

Any changes to electoral wards had to be finalized before the end of April to be in effect for this fall’s municipal election.

The draft proposal prepared by city administration would have seen most of the wards receive new names based on their geographical location within Brandon. Currently, wards are named after features, neighbourhoods or streets.

This was proposed as a way of making it easier for residents to know which ward they live in.

For instance, the Riverview ward, currently represented by Coun. Glen Parker, would have become Brandon East Ward 9.

However, at Tuesday’s meeting, some councillors expressed concern that having wards with similar names to the provincial constituencies Brandon West and Brandon East may cause some confusion for residents.

Because of this, council voted to amend the bylaw under discussion to just assign simple numerical names to each ward going forward.

Assiniboine will become Ward 1, Rosser, Ward 2; Victoria, Ward 3; University, Ward 4; Meadows-Waverly, Ward 5; South Centre, Ward 6; Linden Lanes, Ward 7; Richmond, Ward 8; Riverview, Ward 9; Green Acres, Ward 10.

“Council may or may not be aware that we have not changed the ward boundaries substantively since 2008,” city clerk Heather Ewasiuk told councillors. “There was a small correction in 2014 to the Meadows-Waverly ward. Based on the new census information that came out for 2021, we look at realigning the boundaries to try and equate the number of residents in each ward.”

The proposed ward boundaries brought forward to council earlier this month were approved with only one change.

At the city’s southwest tip, an area that lies mostly under the Richmond ward is attached to the Linden Lanes ward. That’ll switch after the new ward boundaries are in place.

“It just makes sense for that little piece of land — I don’t even think there’s one house in there — to become part of the Richmond Ward instead of the Linden Lanes Ward because the Linden Lanes Ward is where all the growth is going to be,” Coun. Shawn Berry (Linden Lanes) said. “Optics-wise, it doesn’t make a lot of sense when it’s right below Richmond Ward.”

After that change, only the Assiniboine, Rosser and Riverview wards will maintain their current boundaries after the next election.

The Green Acres ward will absorb areas east of Ninth Street and south of Maryland Avenue while transferring areas along Queens Avenue and Richmond Avenue west of First Street to South Centre.

Richmond Ward is losing some of its territory at its northwest corner from Maryland Avenue northward to Richmond Avenue to the Meadows-Waverly ward.

Meadows-Waverly is receiving some of the biggest changes under the new map. Apart from gaining some territory from Richmond Ward, it is losing an area that protrudes westward from its main territory westwards.

The western part of this protrusion is being gobbled up by Victoria Ward while the eastern half will join the University ward. Both of those wards will now border Linden Lanes to the south.

Mayor Rick Chrest said there had been some discussion of establishing fewer wards with multiple councillors per ward, but there was not enough time to evaluate and implement such changes before the deadline at the end of the month.

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