Air museum seeks May takeoff

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This article was published 05/04/2023 (944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After being grounded for about four months, it’s hoped that next month will see the hangar doors of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum flung open to guests once again and its planes back in the skies.

Brandon City Council agreed on Monday to draw $171,000 from the airport reserve to pay for emergency repairs needed to reopen the museum — repairs that are now complete.

“It’s certainly needed,” the museum’s executive director, Stephen Hayter, said on Tuesday. “All of our emergency shoring is in place, the building is stable. We’re just waiting for the green light from our engineer.”

Eighty-year-old Hangar No. 1, which usually houses the museum’s vintage aircraft and other exhibits, has been closed since early November when damaged roof trusses were discovered that put the roof at risk of collapse.

The museum is home to 40,000 artifacts, has one of Canada’s largest Second World War aircraft collections and draws up to 28,000 visitors per year.

The trusses have now been reinforced and the museum is waiting for an engineer to complete a final report, Hayter said. Hopefully, it will reopen on May long weekend, if not sooner on May 12 for Manitoba Day.

Reopening in May would allow school groups to once again tour the facility, Hayter said. He said the sooner the engineering report is done and approval given to reopen, the better, as the museum had to move its exhibits to make way for the emergency repair and they need to be set back up.

Also, most of the aircraft have been crammed into the west side of the hangar, away from the damaged side of the space. While the building is now stable, Hayter said there will be further relief when snow on the roof melts and relieves pressure.

“Once the snow goes, then we can open the hangar doors and start adjusting our collection,” Hayter said. “Because it’s so tight together, we can’t even shuffle it without opening the doors.”

The museum is also looking forward to Armed Forces Day in June, while the museum’s flying committee wants to get planes in the air.

The $171,000 will pay for most of the estimated $200,000 cost of the emergency work and the rest will be covered by remaining funds from the museum’s capital campaign, Hayter said.

The emergency repair will allow the museum to return to full business, but it remains to be seen how it will handle the permanent repairs to the hangar, what that will cost and where those funds will come from, he noted. Fundraising, a capital campaign, and support from the provincial and federal governments are likely sources.

City council approved the spending on the museum as it adopted the 2022 financial information return. The Municipal Act requires each municipality to file an unaudited financial information return for the preceding year.

A city council report provided for Monday evening’s meeting shows that the general operating fund for 2022 has a projected surplus of a little more than $2 million. That money will be split among six reserves, the largest contribution going to the COVID restart general reserve ($1.3 million).

Under the general revenue fund, the department which posted the biggest surplus was transit/handi-transit at just over $1.2 million, followed by the fire department at about $1 million. The department with the biggest deficit was finance at $908,005 overall with accounting showing a deficit of more than $1.18 million.

Director of finance Tara Pearce said the surplus in the transit/handi-transit line is due to $1.3 million in transit funding the city received at the end of last year. Those are the funds going to the COVID restart reserve.

Most of the surplus under the fire department budget line came under the ambulance service, which had an approved budget $743,654 but used only $102,559, leaving a $641,095 surplus.

Besides the $1.3 million going to the COVID restart reserve, $110,000 will go to the capital development reserve, $40,000 to the traffic control devices reserve, $171,000 to the airport reserve for the above mentioned repairs at the air training plan museum, $25,000 to the centennial auditorium reserve for an ongoing sustainability study, and $358,807 to the Sportsplex reserve.

Overall, the utility revenue operating fund also shows a projected operating surplus of about $1.1 million. That money will be placed into the water distribution reserve ($814,527) and the wastewater reserve ($286,185).

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com