Land purchase for new school ‘unusual’: Ross

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This article was published 22/05/2025 (308 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time in Brandon School Division history, land for a new school has to be purchased.

BSD board chair Linda Ross said the province will provide funding to the division to buy land for the new K-8 school in the city’s southwest, but confirmed that the division has always been given land in the past.

“This is unusual for us,” said Ross. “Often, land has been put aside by the city — or when new developments are taking place, there is an agreement in place for a certain amount of land to be put aside for a school.”

The province announced funding for the new school at the provincial budget on March 20. It is scheduled to open for the 2027-28 school year.

Ross said land might not have had to be bought had the timeline not been so tight.

“Although we’ve been lobbying for a school forever, it all came to fruition quite quickly,” she said.

She said the city didn’t have any land set aside for a school like it has in the past, and the division had to act quickly and find a location.

“These plans take a really long time to develop,” said Ross. “The province announced they were going to build four schools (for the 2027-28 school year), and not in any particular order, so we’re trying to do this as quickly as we could so that we can be at the top of that list.”

While this is the first time BSD has had to buy land for a school, it’s common in other parts of the province, said a spokesperson for Education Minister Tracy Schmidt. Ross acknowledged BSD is one of the few divisions that hasn’t had to do this before.

“We have been quite an outlier in not having to purchase land,” said Ross.

The Manitoba Planning Act says land should be put aside for schools at no extra cost. The Brandon Sun pointed this out to Schmidt’s spokesperson, and didn’t get a reply.

The spokesperson confirmed other divisions, including many in Winnipeg, buy property for schools, and that the province gave the OK to BSD for the new school.

“School divisions have the autonomy to buy land, and this is standard practice by all school divisions,” said the spokesperson in an email. “Need for a new Brandon school was determined, and the school division was given authority from government to enter into negotiations with the vendor to purchase the property.

“This has been common practice for quite some time everywhere else in Manitoba,” wrote the spokesperson. “Previously the City of Brandon required the developer to set aside land.”

The developer for the property, John Burgess, said the division approached him years ago about buying the land from him. He said he doesn’t know why the division originally came to him directly.

BSD treasurer Denis Labossiere said the division started looking for land last year, and that the agreement for the land was a provincial matter. He said the province told them to find property.

“When we started, we got the green light from the province to work with the developer on the land,” said Labossiere.

He said the division had to get approval from the province to negotiate for the land, and again had to get approval before actually making a purchase.

Labossiere deferred multiple questions to the province, saying a lot of information would only be known by them.

Labossiere and Ross both said they aren’t able to share how much the land is being bought for, which the province also said it couldn’t do. Ross said the division will be able to share the information eventually, but doesn’t know when that might be.

Ross also said there are too many factors in play to say if the division will have to buy land for schools in the future.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett also deferred comments to the province and school division. He said the city doesn’t have anything to do with the plan, aside from approving the land to be rezoned to educational from agricultural use.

“I talked to our planning team, and we don’t make any of these decisions,” Fawcett said. “Why they’ve decided to do this now, maybe (because it’s an) urban centre. I don’t know. The city hasn’t played a role in any of that.”

Brandon City Council quickly passed first reading of the rezoning bylaw on Tuesday evening, spending less than a minute on the subject. Second and third readings haven’t been scheduled yet.

Ward 7 Coun. Shawn Berry told the Sun last week that council will likely approve the rezoning.

“I’d like to meet the person on council that’s going to vote no against that,” he said.

The school division will own the property after everything is settled, said the province.

Ryan Nickel, the city’s director of planning and buildings, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

alambert@brandonsun.com