Four candidates vie for downtown ward

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.

The race in Ward 2 is tied for the busiest in the city, with four candidates vying for the downtown seat.

Former councillor Sunday Frangi, former mayoral candidate Deveryn Ross, city planner Sonikile Tembo and pastor Buchi Onuke are registered for the Oct. 28 election.

Frangi, who served in the Meadows-Waverly ward — now Ward 5 — between 2021 and 2022, said revitalizing the city’s downtown and improving safety are his biggest concerns heading into the election. That fix, Frangi said, starts with improving housing.

“This city is growing. We need to focus on housing now, rather than waiting for crisis to happen over the next few years,” Frangi, 50, said.

That includes a mix of different types of housing, like supportive and transitional homes for those who need it, most of which would be downtown, he said.

“If the aim is to grow downtown, or revitalize downtown, we need to bring people to downtown,” Frangi said.

He said the city is moving in the right direction, with the 72-unit Eddy Residences having been announced over the summer as an example.

“If I get elected as city councillor, my responsibility (is) to advocate for more housing. We need to engage with our provincial partners. We need to engage with our federal partners and advocate for more housing for Brandon,” Frangi said.

He said his time as a former councillor, despite it being a short period, helped him build relationships other candidates in the ward don’t have.

“Those 18 months gave me the opportunity to better understand how council functions and the responsibilities that come with it,” Frangi said.

Ward 2, formerly the Rosser ward, encompasses land south of the Assiniboine River and north of Victoria Avenue, between First and 18th streets.

Ross, 65, who was a columnist for the Sun before registering as a candidate and ran for mayor in 2006, said safety in the ward “is a more pervasive concern than most people realize.” The safety issue isn’t just in the direct downtown, he said, but affects the entire area.

“It’s the basic hierarchy of needs. Top of the list is you need to feel safe. You can’t feel in danger in your own home or in your own neighbourhood. That’s no way to live, and the rest of the city needs to understand that,” he said.

Ross, who lives in the ward — as does Frangi and Tembo — said his life has been threatened multiple times over the years, he has seen people get beaten up and he has found many weapons while walking around the neighbourhood. During an interview last week, Ross brought two axes, a giant knife and a roofing hammer as examples of the weapons he has found in his community.

The city needs to acknowledge that there is a very real problem downtown, he said. It also needs to find better housing solutions than just downtown, and to “stop importing the knuckleheads.”

“It’s no mystery that every time a camp is cleaned out in Winnipeg, the population increases in Brandon,” Ross said. “We don’t have the capacity, and yet we’ve become known as a social services destination. We need to do better here. We need to work with the Crown. We need to work with the province to make downtown safer.”

Tembo, 36, also said safety is the biggest issue, along with homelessness and drug use. She said if she had a “magic wand,” she would improve The Town Centre mall, which could be transformed into an anchor and catalyst for the neighbourhood.

Tembo said homelessness will never disappear from Brandon, but it can get to a point of “functional zero.”

“That’s when we have the services, we have the types of housing, whether it’s safe and warm or transitional housing or supportive housing, so that people are being placed where they need to go. That’s more what we’re going for,” said Tembo, who is on leave from her job as a principal planner with the city.

She said homelessness is not just a downtown issue anymore, and council needs to consider locating new social services to other parts of the city.

“There’s a need to see more transitional and affordable and different kinds of housing in all other wards,” Tembo added.

The city, she said, should provide more funding for grassroots initiatives around safety and drug use.

Onuke, who is a pastor downtown at International Gospel Christian Ministries, but lives in the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis, said stability for the ward’s businesses and residents is his main concern.

“When neighbourhood is stable, families feel secure, businesses can plan and individuals facing hardship have a better chance of rebuilding,” Onuke, 60, said last week.

“Listening is a big part of what I do. So I want to listen to their stories. And listen to what they want, and then we can deliberate on that.”

He said safety is also a big priority for him, as his Eighth Street church has been burglarized and his son was the victim of a sword attack at École secondaire Neelin High School last year.

Improving safety, he said, starts with “making (offenders) feel that they are important, they are part of the society, by listening to their stories. Make them feel that they belong.”

Onuke said despite living in Cornwallis, he is a strong candidate because he works and spends most of his time in Ward 2.

The city also has a responsibility to accommodate homeless people with housing, he said.

On the topic of business in downtown Brandon, Onuke suggested organizing a town hall meeting with business owners, workers and residents to find out what should be done to attract new business to the area.

During the summer, a large portion of the ward that lies north of the CPKC rail line and south of the Assiniboine River was under evacuation notice because of flooding. The Sun asked each candidate what they would do to mitigate the risk of flooding in the future.

Frangi said Brandon has already improved its flood protection, but that the city needs resources in that area.

“We need to be on top of that. We need more resources available. We need to plan ahead. We need to plan ahead for future flooding,” he said.

The neighbourhood’s infrastructure, needs improvement, he said, without going into detail about what that means. The city also needs to build more homes in the neighbourhood.

Ross said some of his columns in past years for newspapers in Brandon and Winnipeg have been about the flooding issue.

“I’m going to take some credit for that because I pushed hard. I wrote about it a lot and I know that governments paid attention,” he told the Sun.

He said the city is more ready now to handle flooding than it has been in the past, noting the impacts of climate change mean that storms are becoming more severe.

“We’re set up for a real problem next spring in that our ground is saturated because of the rain we received all summer long,” Ross said.

He suggested the city could find a way to utilize one of the oxbow lakes on the western side of the municipality.

“But there may come a point in time when we need to really ask ourselves, ‘How safe is it down there?’” he said about the neighbourhood in his ward just south of the river.

“We need to be vigilant, and we need to acknowledge that there are hundreds of people on the dry side of that dike right now who are at risk.”

Tembo said this year’s response was well managed and she wants the city to keep the area as low-density housing, as it is prone to flooding.

“Flooding is a risk, and when you buy a house in Assiniboine Gardens, you understand that there is a risk in that area, and that’s why we’re not permitting more density,” she said.

“I think people also need to understand when you’re in an area that’s prone to flooding, that there is more of a risk that it could happen.”

Onuke said he would like to look into the details of the issue before he comments on it.

All four candidates have confirmed they will participate in the Oct. 14 Ward 2 debate at Brandon University.

Advanced voting is Oct. 14, 17 and 22.

» alambert@brandonsun.com