Council advances new school, downtown committee

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This article was published 05/10/2021 (1804 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Work has yet to start, but Brandon is closer to building its next school after Monday’s city council meeting.

At the meeting, council voted to subdivide and rezone land at 2210 Maryland Ave. that will allow for both the creation of a new K-12 school operated by the District scolaire francomanitobain (DSFM) as well as an opportunity for landowners Patricia Mazer Holdings Ltd. to build a future commercial development nearby.

“As many of the community members are aware, there’s a separate site owned by the Brandon School Division to the north of Maryland operated as a very successful community garden for many years,” city planning director Ryan Nickel said at the meeting.

“That will remain as such. I know it was one of the options explored, but it did not move forward and that’s why this alternate site to the south was explored.”

Nickel further explained that typically subdivisions are not brought forward until rezoning applications for the same piece of land are still pending, but said that both items were being done at the same time so that funding for the school project could be released.

He added that as part of the rezoning, public reserve land located to the west of the proposed school site will be maintained as a green space with access to the school and Brentwood Mobile Home Park.

The road going by the school site will be widened by four metres to allow for the installation of sidewalks on the south side, learning from problems encountered during the opening of Maryland Park School in January.

“This is one of the smoothest applications that I’ve ever seen with the group,” Nickel said. “Really great feedback to the francophone school division and their consultant for the process.”

The creation of the francophone school as well as a new K-8 English school for Brandon was announced in January by Spruce Woods Progressive Conservative MLA and Education Minister Cliff Cullen. They are among several new schools planned for the province.

Currently, the closest DSFM school to Brandon is located at CFB Shilo.

“I know that this will be a welcomed addition by many citizens,” Mayor Rick Chrest said. “I know the school will probably be immediately full when it opens.”

Meanwhile, members of the new Downtown Safety and Wellness Task Force were announced on Monday, but not without making a change first.

Before announcing who would be a part of the new initiative, Chrest said interest in joining the committee was sufficient enough to expand its membership.

“We had an overwhelming response, a great many excellent people,” Chrest said. “We won’t be able to accommodate all of them on the committee, but we did want to expand the committee a little bit to take advantage of a couple of these citizens without making it too unwieldy.”

That meant two additional people were added to the “citizens-at-large” component of the committee’s membership.

“To echo your sentiment, we were positively floored by the response from the community,” said Coun. Kris Desjarlais (Rosser), who put forth the motion to expand the committee. “There were so many names, so many qualified candidates that we felt we were behooved to add a couple extra spots to allow for more voices to be heard.”

The members of the committee from now until Oct. 3, 2022 are as follows: Coun. Jeff Fawcett (Assiniboine), Coun. Bruce Luebke (South Central), Drew Kinsmen, Christopher Hees, Joy Escalera, Tim Silversides, Sandy Smith, James Chambers, Matthew Scott Grills, Jeanine Pelletier and Cam Wirch.

For those who were interested in participating in the task force but were not among the appointees, Desjarlais said there will be other opportunities to assist through subcommittee work and that other city councillors will be involved down the line.

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