Right in the centre - Do we need a bigger vision

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Published on Monday, August 27, 2018

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

As we creep slowly towards the 2018 municipal elections, do we need to set a larger vision for our communities? Do we need to aim higher, run farther, build bigger?

I believe we do and some of the initiatives that we need to pursue aren’t that expensive. Some just take a shift in thinking.  If some of the examples are Neepawa-centred, I apologize to the many other towns covered by the Banner. I have said before, both by spoken word that and in print, that the community of Neepawa grows more in spite of its council and than because of it. I have also said that Neepawa council is the place where good ideas go to die. The examples are meant to illustrate the obvious need for initiative.

Here’s one blatant example. In the middle of downtown Neepawa, there is a patch of pavement with a couple of pieces of junk on it and a broken down chain link fence around it. It is affectionately called a skateboard park. It is rarely used. Perhaps the disuse is due to a lack of interest on the part of kids, but it’s more likely because the park has no equipment and unexciting? It has been that way for several years. It would take two people about a day to tear down the fence and clean up the site. Why has it not happened? Is the Town that short of staff or money? “Everybody,” says it should be cleaned up but “Nobody” does it.

Looking at what might be a bigger project, namely the surface condition of the streets, why has there never been a plan brought forward to systematically re-surface all the streets? It has been an election platform forever. It has been asked for, but little happens. Having served two times as mayor of Neepawa (1998-2002 and 2012-2014), I know full well it has been discussed and requested, but still, there is no integrated street plan.

Here’s another issue. When I became mayor for the second time, we were presented with a series of photos showing how bad the manhole accesses to the sewage lines were. To say they were crumbling and very dangerous was an understatement. Council did ask that they all be made safe and hopefully, they were.

What the relatively simple manhole project illustrates is that staff need to bring a plan to council, discuss it, make a decision and then ask for implementation. If anything has been lacking in the Town of Neepawa, it is the fact that for 30 years or more, there has been a lack of plan development by staff.

That is shifting, as the new sewer line and the lagoon work is a definite big step in the right direction.

The recent shift in garbage and recycling pick up is now starting to improve, but was a disaster for about a year.

Earlier this summer, Neepawa went through a rigorous public meeting about cemetery maintenance. To keep the Neepawa cemetery at the level it has been at is quite expensive. That said, it is still a beautiful place, but there have been literally dozens of suggestions over the last 20 years and I can’t see that any of them have been implemented. Suggestions, such as automated trickle irrigation, mulching, container gardening and an elevated training program for student staff have been largely ignored. Was it staff or council that killed the initiatives? I am not sure, but the way the Neepawa cemetery is run will likely have to change. It would be nice if changes at the cemetery, and elsewhere were, by design and not by default.

And therein lies the problem for every town. There will have to be changed. Will it come by design or by default? That choice is in our hands this fall, as change will come. Will we determine our specific town’s future or will we just sit back and hope for the best? Trust me, I have been in business and public life for over 50 years and we better be working by design, because default mode leads to the decline and death of our communities.