Veteran campaigners face off in Ward 7

Until election day, The Brandon Sun will be running profiles on each of the city’s 10 electoral wards, asking candidates to identify the most important problems facing their ward.

Brandon city council’s Ward 7 race is between two experienced candidates — the city’s longest-serving councillor and a challenger who’s run in both federal and provincial elections for the NDP.

Incumbent Shawn Berry, who is running for his fifth term, said despite previously being on the fence about running in the Oct. 28 election, he is fully confident he would be able to be an effective councillor for the next four years.

Berry faces Quentin Robinson. Both candidates live in the ward.

Berry, 64, said he wants to lobby the rest of council to make infrastructure improvements, as water main breaks and other infrastructure problems are affecting a large portion of his ward.

Ward 7 encompasses the city’s southwest corner, west of 26th Street and south of the CN rail line. It is almost completely residential, with new developments being built in the extreme southwest of the city.

While part of the ward is new or developing, other parts are old and in need of repair, Berry said.

“We’re getting a lot of water main breaks all over the place in Linden Lanes ward,” he said, calling the ward by the name it used to have until 2022. “Some are having to go back two, three times to fix. Like our infrastructure in our ground in my area is getting very old and it has to be replaced.”

That fix, he said, will be costly, but he wants to secure his ward’s place in line as most of the city is facing a similar issue.

“It’s not just two or three water main breaks a year. Now it’s like seven, eight, 10 a year. They’re constant.”

He said he will do what he can at budget time to advocate for those fixes, noting that he’s one of only 11 votes around the council table.

“I can maybe advocate and push a little harder to be … put in the queue, so to speak, to get certain things done,” he said.

Robinson, 69, said his biggest priority is for the city to pause and take a good look at the development happening in the Brookwood South and Bellafield neighbourhoods.

He said growing Brandon outward is costing taxpayers a lot of money and that infill housing in other neighbourhoods, which could use existing infrastructure, might be a better solution.

“We keep kind of pushing the infrastructure out farther and farther, and then noticing that now our taxes are going up and up, and water rates as well,” said Robinson, a member of Sustainable Brandon and former unsuccessful provincial and federal NDP candidate.

“I’m thinking, ‘What’s driving this bus?’ and thinking that maybe we need to be taking a look at what’s driving development, and is this really taking us in the direction we need to go as a city?”

Robinson said higher-density development in established neighbourhoods would also be positive as Brandon Transit is already in place for residents to use.

He previously said that the city’s future apartment or condo blocks should be prioritized along major street corners, as it would make for quick access to transit and stores for people who live in those homes. The people who live in larger apartment blocks instead of single homes are typically newcomers or people who are still starting out with lower income, and are more likely to need services like transit, he said.

When asked about his opinion on the new Brookwood South neighbourhood, which will include a new K-8 school, Robinson said the city needs to turn its attention to another new development altogether.

He said the South Village neighbourhood in Ward 8 — located west of 18th Street and south of Patricia Avenue, which will include a mix of housing, commercial and a large greenspace — needs to be re-evaluated, as the development is happening on a wetland.

Robinson said he’s concerned that the development will take up too much space of the wetland, and the wetland won’t be as functional anymore.

“It’s really important to make sure that the development that happens actually leaves a functioning wetland there, because it provides so many essential environmental services in terms of being part of the drainage system — flood protection — and that’s a huge concern,” Robinson said.

He noted that the commercial development there could turn out to be similar to the Corral Centre, which has had to be protected by flood mitigation measures as recently as this year.

If the South Village development were to go through as planned, Robinson said he’s concerned that water could back up and flood multiple areas of the city, including his ward.

“My view is that we really have to look carefully at every detail of how that’s put in place, both for environmental reasons, but also to avoid $2 million worth of flood mitigation, which we had this year,” he said.

While the South Village neighbourhood isn’t in his ward, Robinson said it is still relevant as the drainage system is all connected.

“If we take away the natural drainage channels, then (there’s a) possibility of backing water up into Brookwood and Bellafield, so that from the ward perspective, that is very much a concern for me.”

He said the city needs to put the brakes on the development before approvals are made.

Berry, when asked about the Brookwood South and Bellafield developments in his ward, said he thinks they are positive.

He said the development took far too long to get going, and the process the city took to get there, including building a lift station, was one that needed to happen.

“I remind people this — is that new school doesn’t get built unless we have a lift station. So, you want a new school? We need a lift station, and we’ve got to pay for it,” Berry said.

The city paid for the lift station through a series of debentures instead of requiring developers to pay for the infrastructure. Developers had argued the city needed to acquire the land from the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis and build a lift station as there was no more land available to build on.

Berry said while all of Brandon’s taxpayers are paying for the city’s expense, that’s how growth has always worked in the past.

“It’s just kind of a legacy that carries on from group to group to group,” Berry said.

“My kids haven’t been at school for 18 years. I still pay school taxes. I do every year, and always have. And do I complain about it? No, because somebody paid for mine when they were going,” he said.

“This is the system. This is the fair way to distribute costs so that everybody can enjoy it and everybody’s treated fairly based on the taxation system.”

Berry also said he wants the city to look at its own e-scooter bylaw once recently passed provincial regulations are in effect, to determine if the rules are strict enough around age limits and maximum speeds.

Both candidates also said they want to attract more businesses to the ward. Currently, Ward 7 has only three businesses, according to Berry.

Berry said he’s hopeful the Bellafield neighbourhood will drive more business, while Robinson said more business would lead to a more active lifestyle for residents, as they wouldn’t need to drive outside the ward constantly.

“What I want is options for people that make their life more pleasant and more affordable, and providing better walking paths or cycling paths, as well as more transit options, that makes life more affordable and more pleasant, less stressful,” Robinson said.

Berry added he wants people to judge him based on the previous 16 years he’s spent on council.

Berry was first elected in 2010 with 42 per cent of the vote in a four-person race, and was then acclaimed in the next three elections.

Both candidates have agreed to take part in the debate for Ward 7 at Brandon University on Oct. 21.

» alambert@brandonsun.com