Steinbach mayor praises city caucus priorities

Five priorities for advocacy have been outlined by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities cities caucus, during a meeting at the organization’s AGM.

Steinbach Mayor Earl Funk reported the decision at the April 15 council meeting, saying the organization that began as a sort of support group for city mayors has turned to advocacy.

“If we can do this collectively and united, we’ll definitely have more of a voice and will be heard a lot more,” he said.

The cities caucus includes Winnipeg, Brandon, Steinbach, Winkler, Portage, Thompson, The Pas, Flin Flon, Dauphin and Selkirk.

Advocating for doctor recruitment and training is first on Funk’s list and is something he proposed to his colleagues some time ago.

“I first presented it last year in September when we met in Thompson and it was received well,” he said. “Now we will be advocating until we see some form of either more rural seats (in medical school) or we have dedicated seats for our communities.”

Another item on the list is to improve agreements with Manitoba Transportation, regarding road maintenance and ditch mowing. Municipalities pick up the slack inside their boundaries, doing those tasks for a fee.

Funk said Steinbach has not had issues with this, but some others have due to poor agreements or lack of resources.

“We seem to be able to work out better agreements at times with our MTI,” he said. “We’ve got a really good relationship.

The rising number of lift assists that volunteer firefighters are called out to perform is also an issue shared by many of the communities. When EMS requires help with a lift, they have turned to fire departments.

“It’s not that we don’t want to help, it’s just that this is health-care issue,” Funk said. “I realize that our EMS workers have challenges, and we want to help them, but I think healthcare needs to fix the problem.”

“We do want to be part of the solution, we want to work together to make something work well,” he added.

The group is also calling for a 50/50 funding return on public transit, a system that used to exist with municipalities paying half their transit costs and other levels of government paying the other half.

“Now the burden goes onto the municipality,” he said.

While Steinbach doesn’t have public transit at this point, having the security in knowing the cost breakdown going forward would help planning according to Funk.

Bail reform was top of the list for many mayors.

“If someone is taken in, arrested and charged, they’re out on bail or released on their own recognizance probably by the next day,” Funk said. “This is so much worse when these are violent crimes and that happens too.”

This push was started by Portage Mayor and caucus chair Sharilyn Knox who Funk praised for coordinating the process of coming up with the five priorities.

“Sharilyn is just such a great leader,” he said. “She took all of our comments, collected them and this is what we came up with.”

The process, which took place in meetings as well as over email, showed Funk how much they have in common.

“There was lots of solidarity there because even though we’re different communities all over the province, so many of our challenges are the same,” he said.