Many councillors undecided ahead of public hearing

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This article was published 21/01/2023 (1019 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Days ahead of a second and final public hearing Monday about whether the City of Brandon should borrow $30 million to build two new lift stations in its southwest areas, Mayor Jeff Fawcett says it will be hard to convince him to not support the project.

Last year, the project became controversial enough that Brandon City Council voted ahead of October’s municipal election to hold a second public hearing on the matter before giving final approval.

In the months since, the city has held a pair of informational meetings about its planning process as well as an open house on the project earlier this week.

On the phone from Winnipeg where he was set to meet with Mayor Scott Gillingham, Fawcett said he hoped the public had taken advantage of the opportunities to learn more about the project.

He said his knowledge of the project is pointing him toward supporting the loan.

“There would have to be some pretty big changes from what I know, but I’ll be keeping an open mind,” he said. “If we’re going to change direction, we’ll have to do something really fast.”

The debt the city may take on for this project and others like the $30-million southeast drainage project would require Brandon to tighten its belt going forward, Fawcett said.

Another council member who’s already made up his mind is Coun. Glen Parker (Ward 9), who said he’ll support the loan.

“I haven’t heard anything to sway my thinking in one way or another,” Parker said. “I’m fully supportive of this investment for our city to grow. The only thing I’m upset with is that we didn’t do it four or five years ago when we first started talking through our strategic plan of being more ready for commercial and industrial investment in our city.”

It’s time to commit to the project, he said, before the project gets more expensive. He said he believes the best time to do this project was five years ago, and the second-best time is now.

The project is pricey, but Parker said down the road the city will face bigger ticket items.

Despite the cost, the councillor said the city should see a return on its investment in the form of taxes and development fees from new developments the project will enable.

One of Brandon’s newly elected councillors from last fall’s municipal election, Coun. Tyson Tame (Ward 10), said his vote is leaning toward support for the loan.

“If you look at the whole entire picture, it’s nearly impossible to not raise your hand for it,” Tame said.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a scary amount of debt, it’s been proven time and again that a city without growth is a city in decline. I think where we are right now, we can’t put out too many more permits, we can’t really build anything.”

Approving this project, he said, will allow the city to pay for future projects through collected developer costs charges and taxes. It will also benefit businesses in town who will supply products and services to the development.

The rest of the councillors the Sun spoke to for this article said they had yet to make up their minds.

The man who called for a second public hearing on the project in the first place, Coun. Kris Desjarlais (Ward 2), expressed gratitude for the way the city and council have slowed the process down to provide more information before reaching a decision.

“I’m clearly more risk-averse than some of our other councillors,” Desjarlais said.

“It’s definitely giving me pause to be borrowing a significant amount of money, not just for growth but for a lot of the other really big infrastructure projects that we have on the go all at the same time. It feels heavy to me.”

He said no matter the result of Monday’s hearing, he wants to continue a dialogue between the city, residents and developers to make growth as affordable and least risky as possible for taxpayers.

That hesitance does not mean he’s anti-growth. He said he just wants to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent based on sound decisions.

With ongoing factors like inflation and the war in Ukraine complicating financial decisions, Desjarlais said he’s trying to consider how they and this project will affect other problems the city needs to tackle, like housing and homelessness.

“There are a lot of priorities and we also have aging infrastructure that needs repair, needs maintenance,” he said. “All these things have to be considered when we’re thinking about investing in growth right now.”

Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) said it would be “premature” for him to come to a final decision before the public hearing.

Though the information presented at the public sessions on the project is material Luebke had seen before, he said it was helpful to have the reminder both for himself and residents.

“I think one of the things after the first public hearing in July was that there wasn’t a lot of understanding in our community about what the project was or even how it related to the proposed utility rate increase and how it was going to work,” he said.

“I think there’s still some of that misunderstanding, misinformation in our community about it so I hope Monday’s public hearing will continue to help in that regard.”

He said with the overall debt load the city is taking on, it may force Brandon to reconsider other projects it might want to tackle, like renovations to the Library/Arts Building or constructing an outdoor aquatic complex or find other ways to pay for them.

Another new councillor, Jason Splett (Ward 8), said he’s heard positive feedback from his constituents about the efforts the city made to inform the public ahead of the second hearing.

As a newcomer to council, he said they were also a big help in his understanding of the project.

“I would have been doing a lot of the homework myself if there hadn’t been the meetings,” he said. “It didn’t answer all of my questions, but it did answer the vast majority of the questions that not only I had, but for people in my ward as well.”

The biggest concern of his and his constituents going into the meeting is how much the project will cost the city over time as well as how much the price of the project has gone up since it was first proposed.

No matter where you stand on the matter, Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) said he’s “pleading with” people to show up for Monday’s public hearing and express their opinion if they have one.

He said he was disappointed in a low turnout for Tuesday’s open house on the project, since the city provided access to both information on the project and staff members able to answer questions about the project’s different aspects.

“We want to hear people’s opinions from all aspects of how this would affect them,” Berry said.

“We don’t just one group of people saying ‘no we don’t want this’ or a group of developers saying ‘yeah, we have to have this’ … this is going to have a huge, huge effect on what happens in the future of Brandon. It’s going to make a decision on whether we continue to grow or whether we stop growing right away. That’s what it’s going to boil down to.”

If someone is in favour of growth but thinks this project is too expensive for the city to take on, or if someone believes that stopping growth will kill the city, Berry said this is their last opportunity to express those thoughts.

Working at Manitoba Ag Days earlier this week, Berry said he had members of the business community come up to him and ask if council was going to approve the project given the ramifications.

While Berry said he understands the ramifications, he wants members of the business community to come and speak at the hearing so residents can be made to understand them.

What Berry hopes residents understand is something presented at a special council meeting held Thursday evening about the city’s debt load.

At that meeting, director of finance Tara Pearce said the project would not have any impacts on residents’ property taxes but would lead to an increase in the per-cubic-metre rates charged for the city’s water and wastewater utilities.

Berry said he hasn’t made up his mind yet and several of his colleagues are in a similar situation.

“People think this is a done deal, but it’s not,” he said. “There’s a lot of indecision, a lot of questions that need to be answered before we put forth the vote.”

The public hearing starts at 5:30 p.m. Monday in council chambers at Brandon City Hall.

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