Are expectations too high?

   With municipal elections looming across Manitoba, it’s important that every voter consider the issues that face their community. Believe me, there are many issues facing our communities. Over the past several weeks, I have been observing discussions and responses from a number of municipalities and towns.

   There are some issues coming up that seem common to all our towns and RMs, the number one issue on peoples’ minds seems to be roads, roads and more roads. It costs a lot of money to maintain a road in rural areas. It costs a lot more money to keep the roads paved and the potholes patched and filled. It would appear that most towns are overwhelmed with the workload. There are bone-jarring ruts and potholes in every town. I doubt at this time that the municipalities or towns have the financial resources to fix all the roads. I suspect the needed repairs will need a number of options to bring about the kind of  roads we want. Local governments could possibly consider more efficient use of the resources they have in terms of staff. Another option is to take paved roads and turn them into gravel roads by re-milling the surface and then use a grader and maintain them much as in fashion that happens in rural municipalities. A third option is to make a strong appeal through the Association of Manitoba Association of Municipalities (AMM) for accessing funding for roads from the senior levels of government, namely the province and the federal government.

   Just about every town and village, and therefore also the surrounding RMs, have a problem maintaining recreation facilities. It should be noted that communities such as Virden, Minnedosa and Rivers have relatively new and well-maintained recreation facilities especially in terms of skating and curling rinks and halls. Carberry has an older facility but it’s in pretty good shape. Other towns, including Neepawa are on the verge of needing major repairs or replacement. Past and recent experience shows that replacement may cost $15-$25 million. If we look a little further afield to Winkler, for example, a major reconstruction was the path chosen rather full replacement. Many of the towns in our newspapers coverage area are faced with repairs or replacement. As distasteful as spending that much money may seem to be, if recreation facilities are not replaced or renovated, the community could soon be no longer viable.

   The third issue that I believe is common to all the communities is a lack of affordable housing. To say the words affordable housing is almost a misnomer now because housing simply isn’t affordable. There are some things that could be changed. Zoning needs to be changed, some of the building regulations need to be changed, but that’s a provincial matter. Then I think peoples’ expectations need to change. Houses have become very large and expensive. Millions of families across Canada were raised in houses that were well under 1,000 square feet. That measurement today is considered intolerable for a family of a mom, dad and two kids. Our expectations have far exceeded our ability to pay for them. I believe that smaller homes are the answer. Any initiative to build smaller homes should be encouraged and not frowned upon. Ironically, it seems that today’s families want to have rooms big enough for every child to have a queen-size bed. Not that many years ago, two or three kids would share a so-called double bed and that was a 54 inch, not a queen. I realize that’s a bit of a side-track but perhaps it is indicative of how our desires and wishes for luxury in everything has surpassed our abilities to be able to pay for such luxury.

   Listed above are but three issues that I think are common to all our communities. There are many other issues as well. Hopefully, once the election dust is cleared at the end of October, the councils will be able to get to work and bring about solutions for their communities that will work and make our communities even more viable and more desirable to live in. As I said last week, municipal government is the most important level of government in Canada. Please vote, please build your councillors up and not tear them down so that we may all have a better life in the rural Manitoba we love. It’s a way of life worth fighting for and allowing it to thrive and grow.

   Get involved and please vote.

   Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Banner & Press staff.