Council passes roadside-memorial policy

Brandon City Council has approved a new policy that could replace roadside memorials with city-made commemorative plaques.

Council approved the policy unanimously at its regular Monday meeting after discussing the importance of the policy and whether changes were needed.

“Our job is to make sure our streets are as safe as possible,” Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett told council.

“I think we need to make sure we are clearing off spaces for the rest of the people that are using the street and using to walk and to cross,” he said.

The new policy would mean bronze plaques could be placed near the crash site as a memorial to the person who died. It would allow the city to remove items such as flowers, personal items and decorations once the plaque is placed.

The proposed plaque reads “drive safely” and says “in memory of (name)” with the date of the person’s death and a city logo, staff told the Sun earlier this month.

The plaques, which would normally be six inches high by 12 inches wide, would be fixed to traffic poles near the site of a crash.

The plaques would be in place for up to five years, at which point they would be given to the families, the policy states.

Coun. Heather Karrouze (Ward 1) questioned why council needs to give a five-year limit at all.

“If we’re going to install memorials that assist families in the grief process, and don’t cause any danger to traffic, why do we have to take it down?” she asked. “Because certainly grief doesn’t have a time limit of five years.”

Coun. Kris Desjarlais (Ward 2) said driver safety is “paramount,” but added the plaques are quite small. He also questioned the need to ever remove them.

“These aren’t big plaques. I just don’t know if there’s ever going to be a problem once they’re put up,” Desjarlais said. “I’m just struggling with the need to remove them after five years.”

Fawcett answered that “policies can be tweaked.”

He said the city is trying to implement a policy with the “most grace possible,” and that it’s important for the policy to be in place because the way things are currently, “it no longer works.”

The plaques will be placed and paid for by the city “upon request by the families of victims,” the policy reads.

Council deferred a decision on the policy at its Dec. 1 meeting, in order to give a specific time frame that would allow makeshift memorials to stay up during the grieving process.

The updated policy says, “All personal items, flowers, or decorations shall be removed from the site once the permanent memorial is put in place; ordinarily within 90 days of the date of the incident.”

Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) said he thinks the 90-day time frame is “fairly short,” and asked if it could be extended to about 180 days to give families more time to grieve and so the city doesn’t intrude so quickly after a tragedy.

Coun. Greg Hildebrand (Ward 5) said the 90 days in the policy could instead be shortened.

“I don’t think 90 days is unreasonable at all. I would advocate for shorter and let families know that we are wanting to work with them and to give them a permanent memorial that respectfully can be put in place and recognize their grieving process,” Hildebrand said.

Nicole Sutherland, whose 15-year-old son Antoine was killed when a car struck him at the intersection of Victoria Avenue and McDiarmid Drive in October 2023, told the Sun on Monday that she is “appalled” by the policy.

Sutherland said she had worked with the city for a plaque to be set up where the memorial for her son currently sits, and thought that the plaque was only going to be used for her son’s site. She said she “had no idea” the city would make a policy out of it.

Sutherland said she feels as though this was a way of shutting her up, and that there shouldn’t be a policy around how long people can grieve.

“Why does there even have to be a policy about something like that? That’s what I don’t understand. There’s more important things that we need policy on than a memorial with flowers,” she said in a phone interview before the council meeting started.

“I just think that’s disgusting to try and control how long a family can put flowers at a site,” Sutherland said.

Instead of spending time and money on the policy, she said, the city should instead have spent it on making the site of her son’s crash safer. She said she would want to see speed bumps or a speed display near the crosswalk on Victoria Avenue.

“I just feel like city council could have focused more on trying to create more safety there, or even just the city itself trying to help me get justice for my son. But no, they’re worried about flowers and a plaque, and I just feel outraged as a mother,” she said.

“I just feel like it was handled distastefully and sneakily.”

A city employee earlier this month told the Sun that the policy was designed because of the Antoine Sutherland memorial, as the items people place trigger the crosswalk’s sensor.

Staff also changed the wording for another section of the policy. At sites where there is not a pole for a plaque to be installed, a wooden stake will be set up instead.

The original policy said a white wooden stake or cross could be set up, but one resident who appeared before council as a delegation said that a religious symbol would be exclusionary.

» alambert@brandonsun.com