The fifth formal meeting of council took place on Monday, January 21, 2019. For those keeping score at home, that is 5 of 88. This was also the final meeting of council prior to budget deliberations which take place Friday and Saturday, January 25 & 26.
This meeting was somewhat lighter as council will be tasked with what is likely to a much longer commitment of time this weekend as we deliberate the budget. Some thoughts on that. Thus budget is incredibly challenging. The city has faced a significant reduction is revenue over the past year, and is faced with rising costs on a number of fronts. I will delve into this more in detail following the weekend (through a future post).
At the meeting this week, council heard presentations from the BNRC (Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation) about the Downtown Ambassador program. This program was a pilot program. It operated in the summer of 2018. It is not included in this year’s budget so would need to be added should it continue to operate in the summer of 2019.
As well, council heard a presentation from city administration on the proposed communications tower for the City of Brandon. This tower, when constructed, would allow the city to operate their own private communication network for use by non-emergency services such as streets and roads, transit and maintenance. Over the long-term this project is likely to save the city over $500,000 by not having to contract out the service to a third party provider.
Following that, a number of by-laws received first reading.
All in all this was a pretty snappy meeting. The large portion of our work this week comes on the weekend.
You can find video of the council meeting at the link below.
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On anything presented here, feel free to reach out if you have questions or comments. I’m always open to hearing what you have to say.
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