Category Archives: Portage Daily Graphic

Lack of consultation leads to lack of public support

Posted from the Daily Graphic July 2 2008

The editorial page in the June 25th issue of The Daily Graphic had an interesting juxtaposition of articles:

In the editorial column, we have Ross Romaniuk of the Winnipeg Sun writing that he can’t understand why anyone would object to the new Blue Bomber stadium being built in Point Douglas: The project would bring badly needed economic development to a struggling area of the city. It would mean great improvement. Let the rich and powerful (“the movers and shakers” of Winnipeg) do what they want. Why should a few thousand residents of Point Douglas have a say? (Maybe because they live there, Mr. Romaniuk?)

It’s highly questionable whether a playing field where the wealthy can sit and watch nine or 10 Bomber games per year will provide any economic or social improvement to the residents of Point Douglas. Sunday’s Sun provided two articles by experts who have examined similar developments across North America, and they suggest that in most cases, the benefits have been marginal, at best.

Appearing just below this poorly thought out editorial were two more letters to the editor about the new Portage recreation complex. They are part of a long series of letters to your paper about this project. The most consistent concern expressed for many months has been the total lack of consultation with the community. Our present mayor and council members seem to think, like Romaniuk, that “the movers and shakers” should have their way, that a few thousand objections don’t matter. The message we get is: “Don’t bother us with questions. We have the answers. It’s money that matters. It’s getting your name on a plaque that’s important. Concerns about the environment, about traffic, about the character of our city are irrelevant.”

The recreation complex project may be going ahead despite the many objections, questions and concerns that remain. Unfortunately, it will do so without the full support of many of the good citizens of Portage and area. The price that’s paid may well include a lack of ongoing, enthusiastic support from our citizens — and a wholesale rejection of the mayor and council in the next election. Is it really worth it, gentlemen?

Jim Penhale

Portage la Prairie

No lease signed

Posted from the Daily Graphic July 2 2008

Re: The lease agreement between the Portage Industrial Exhibition Association and the City and Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie.

I have been asking the city office for a copy of the above-noted lease agreement.

As a result of my request, I have a letter from the city, dated May 7, stating the lease agreement “is still in negotiations at this time and is not available.” As a result of my follow-up letter, I received a letter from the city, dated June 24, stating the lease agreement “is not complete and is currently being drafted.”

I would like to know how the multiplex committee (including the city and RM) are able to “tender” for the construction of a multi-million dollar building on land not secured by an EXECUTED, BINDING lease agreement. Should not the site of the building be secured by a signed, sealed and binding document before any steps towards construction are taken?

N.V. Kerman

Portage la Prairie

What about spinoff?

Posted from the Letters to the Editor in the Portage Daily Graphic June 18 2008

What about spinoff?

With so many unanswered questions surrounding the construction of the multiplex, I have one for the city’s Economic Development Committee. How can you recommend the centre be built on the island?

A forty million dollar civic project should produce millions in spinoffs, but all I see are increased expenses. A centre built on already owned land at the Republic Park, with exits out Angle Road (recently upgraded for heavy traffic), would present the opportunity for development in the east end. It takes little foresight to predict a hotel, restaurant, gas bar, fast food and other developments servicing the new centre in the eastern end of Portage.

What new private developments are forseen with the centre located on the island?

A project such as the multiplex should increase the city tax base, not add costs to those already here.

Yours truly,

Craig O’Reilly

Portage la Prairie

City moves one step closer in plan to lobby for increased debt capacity

Anybody want to hazard a guess why the City of Portage la Prairie wants to change the rules so they can borrow more money ?

As published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10th 2008

The city of Portage la Prairie has passed its first hurdle in an attempt to have the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) lobby the Manitoba government to change the way the province assesses municipal debt.

Members at the AMM’s 2008 Central District Annual Meeting, held in Portage today, voted in favour of the city’s resolution to bring the matter to a vote at the AMM annual convention in November.

The city drafted the resolution because it’s concerned that the Manitoba Municipal Board (MMB) limits the amount of money municipal governments are allowed to borrow to seven per cent of the total portioned assessment of their tax base. The problem the city sees with the system is the seven per cent includes borrowing the city has undertaken that will not be paid by property tax revenues, restricting the city’s borrowing capabilities.

“It feels good to get it through this first step,” said Coun. Dave Quinn, head of the city’s finance, legislative and property committee. “We’re looking at trying to change something for all municipalities, it feels good to do something for Portage, but when you can spread that a little bit wider, I think that’s even better.”

The resolution will face another vote at the AMM annual convention in November, and if it passes, the organization will begin lobbying the provincial government to change the way the MMB looks at municipalities’ debt loads.

All about the green for the PCU Centre

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 6th 2008

The PCU Centre proposed to be built on the fairgrounds at Island Park in Portage la Prairie is a little short of the type of green it takes to construct such a project. However, once the recreation complex is completed, the building will definitely not be short on the kind of green it takes to be environmentally friendly.

That’s because the designers of the building have made sure to include enough environmentally sustainable features the project has been able to be registered as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental and Design (LEED) Silver-rated project.

“Right from the start, this was to be a LEED Silver building; that was a given,” explained Guenter Schaub, project manager for the multiplex and principal structural engineer at Tower Engineering. “And we were happy that it was because that means it’s a sustainable building.”

The LEED green building rating system was originally started by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998, and was adopted by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in 2003.

According to the CaGBC website, buildings in Canada currently contribute as much as 35 per cent of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Their goal is to reduce the percentage of emissions in Canada to zero by 2030, by using the LEED program to make sure new buildings, such as the PCU Centre, are built more efficiently and use less energy, create less waste and conserve water.

“LEED looks at energy efficiency and sustainability, and it’s not just heating and insulation, although that is a big part of it,” explained Schaub. “It looks at a lot of things, like whether the site you’re building on has been built on before, or whether it’s raw land that you’re plowing up. It looks at what you’re doing with rain water: are you storing it on site and making use of it or are you just dumping it into the municipal system?; and where your building materials are coming from: are they coming from close by or are they coming from miles and miles away?”

The CaGBC LEED program uses five principal categories when deciding how green a building is and whether it will be given a silver, gold or platinum rating. The five categories are site sustainability, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resource and indoor environmental quality.

Each category has a number of points associated with it, and the more goals a project hits, the more points it receives, giving it a higher rating.

Out of a possible 70 points, the PCU Centre had to hit between 33 and 38 points to receive the silver certification.

“Green building is really a tool to help communities to achieve their sustainability objectives,” said Rodney McDonald, chairman of CaGBC’s Manitoba chapter. “We’d like to congratulate the RM of Portage and the City of Portage for registering the project with the CaGBC, and pursuing a LEED certification; it shows real leadership for the community.”

To be able to register the project as LEED Silver, designers of the PCU Centre incorporated a number of environmentally sound ideas into the construction. For example, the building will use excess heat produced by the artificial ice plant, which keeps the two ice surfaces cold, to help heat both the building and pool water.

Also, water runoff from the parking lots and building surfaces will be naturally filtered and stored in a retention pond located on the fairground property before it is sent back to the lake. The pond will be aerated by three windmills, and the process is designed to remove foreign matter from the water, as well as provide a nice spot for people to sit around the multiplex.

“Basically, we’re making sure that we will not be putting anything into the ground that we shouldn’t,” explained Coun. Jeff Bereza, chairman of the city’s planning and economic development committee. “All the water will be pretreated before it goes into a water body like Crescent Lake.”

A number of smaller things will also help the building be as green as possible, such as using natural light instead of standard lighting wherever possible and using recycled materials in the concrete.

Not only will the LEED Silver designation aid the environment, it will also save some of the money needed to build the project.

The federal and provincial governments have each promised to give the project $3.3 million in public funding, but both levels of government would not have offered the money if the PCU Centre had not achieved at least a LEED Silver rating.

Portage Mayor Ken Brennan said although the provincial and federal funding played a role in the decision to reach the LEED Silver rating, he said there were other factors in the decision process as well.

“We wanted to build a building that makes sense as far as the environment is concerned, as far as energy consumption is concerned, and as far as operating costs are concerned,” he said. ‘The fact that it’s somewhere between a LEED Silver and LEED Gold rating means that it is a highly energy-efficient, green-type building, and that is just the right thing to do in this day and age.”

Brennan said some of the environmental choices made by the designers will also save the city money in running the facility, once it is operational. He pointed to the plan to use the heat from the ice plant to heat the building as a prime example of why the LEED Silver rating is good for both the environment and the city’s pocketbook as well.

“That is a huge cost saving to the city as far as operational costs down the road, and it’s also good for the environment,” explained the mayor. “We’re not using a lot of energy that we needn’t use, and we’re not blasting a lot of hydrocarbons by burning gas.”

At a public meeting held on May 15, the city announced the multiplex, which was originally estimated to cost no more than $38 million was actually going to come in at $42 million, and as a result, the project has been put on hold while costs are shaved.

The cost-saving measures taken to bring the price tag on the PCU Centre down to a workable amount will not affect the environmental aspects included in the original plan, according to Brennan.

“That’s something that we can’t change with the cost because it’s part of the criteria for the federal and provincial money,” he said. “I don’t think that we’d want to anyway because it’s important that we build that type of green building in our community.”

Bereza pointed out the PCU Centre is not only planned for people presently living in Portage and in the area, but as something people will be able to use and be proud of for a long time. He said spending a little more money right now to make sure the building is environmentally sustainable will make sure the sports complex will be around for a long time into the future.

“I think that when we looked at building the multiplex, we looked at building something for generations to come,” said Bereza about the project. “To be as environmentally responsible as possible and to make a project that is very energy efficient and is very ecologically efficient was incredibly important to us.”

Tupper, Crescent Road designated truck routes

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10 2008

The City of Portage la Prairie is driving forward with plans to designate two city roadways as truck routes.

At Monday’s city council meeting, councillors voted to approve an amendment to the traffic bylaw that will see sections of Crescent Road East and Tupper Street South turned into truck routes in order to give heavy traffic access to the temporary causeway currently under construction west of the Crescent Lake bridge.

Council was poised to approve the amendment at its May 26 meeting, but decided to defer the decision after meeting stiff opposition from local residents.

The city’s transportation committee met with city engineers and the RCMP last week to look into any compromises that could be made.

“In our committee meeting, we were very cognizant of the opinions expressed at the council meeting two weeks ago, albeit that the project had to go ahead,” explained transportation committee chairman Coun. Orville Wagner after the meeting. “I don’t presume to suggest that everybody is going to be satisfied — as a matter of fact I’m sure they’re not — but it’s one inconvenience that that section is going to have to put up with.”

The changes will mean the north side of Crescent Road from Tupper to Royal Road and the west side of Tupper Street South from Dufferin Avenue to Crescent Road will be designated 24-hour, no-parking zones.

One of the concerned citizens who came to the May 26 meeting was Keith Hutchinson, who lives at the corner of Tupper and Crescent. He told council he receives dinners daily from Meals on Wheels, and the no parking zone would mean the drivers would have nowhere to park around his home.

The transportation committee changed the original amendment, to give an extra 10 metres of parking on the east side of the south end of Tupper Street to make sure essential services had access to Hutchinson’s home.

“We were particularly cognizant of the needs of Mr. Hutchinson, who requires services to be provided to him,” said Wagner. “The 10 metres is right adjacent to Mr. Hutchinson’s house, so hopefully that will resolve that particular problem.”

McCain makes concession to multiplex

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10 2008

Another local business is standing behind the proposed PCU Centre in Portage la Prairie.

At Monday night’s city council meeting, councillors approved a $100,000 bid from McCain Foundation/McCain Foods Ltd. for naming rights of the two concessions at the proposed multiplex.

“We’re pleased to have gotten the offer from McCains, and we’re more than happy to accept their generous offer,” said Portage Mayor Ken Brennan after the meeting. “We look forward to seeing their name on the concessions in the new multiplex.”

The $100,000 will be given in $25,000 increments over the next four years, and will secure naming rights to the main floor concession and the concession on the second floor in the main arena for McCain over the next 20 years. The city also promised the concessions will try to use McCain products at the concessions whenever possible.

Brennan said the bid from McCain shows the multiplex project, which has been delayed since the city announced it was nearly $10 million short of the funds needed to build the complex, is something the community still wants to see built.

“The support for this project continues to grow in the community,” he explained. “From what I’ve been hearing, people don’t want us to lose focus on this; they want us to keep driving forward.”

The city had originally budgeted a maximum of $38 million to build the PCU Centre, but some of the funding promised by both the provincial and federal governments fell through, and to make matters worse the last estimated price of the build put the total cost of the project at $42 million.

Brennan has been in meetings with members of his council along with councillors from the Rural Municipality of Portage and designers of the multiplex trying to come up with ways to bring down the total price tag of the multiplex project.

He is hopeful the project will be tendered soon, so work on the project can start sometime this summer.

Farmers call for multiplex referendum

As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic Thursday June 12 2008

The Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie should be forced to hold a referendum on whether its residents want to continue with its plan to give $8 million to the PCU Centre in Portage, according to a letter sent to RM council by two Oakville-area farmers.

Abe Peters and Bob Murray sent the letter to RM council, which outlined the matter to councillors. The referendum should be held if the multiplex committee decides to change any plans for the project, which has come in over budget.

Plans for the multiplex, which included two arenas, an aquatic centre and a fitness centre were released at a public meeting on May 15. The city and RM admitted at that time changes would have to be made to the plans because the building was more expensive than they could afford.

The original estimate for the project came in around $36 million, while the revised estimated cost was actually $42 million, and the build has been put on hold while planners look at ways of cutting costs, which may include changes to the plans.

“There is more than likely going to be changes made from the presentation that was made a week or two ago,” said Reeve Toby Trimble. “We’re in the process of meeting and deciding where we’re going to go.”

The RM authorized a borrowing bylaw allowing it to take on the $8-million debt on Aug. 14, 2007. No one showed up in opposition of it at a public hearing before the vote. Peters said that’s because no one knew about the hearing, and farmers were too busy harvesting at the time to come to the meeting anyway. Some rural residents are now upset because the RM raised taxes by 5.1 per cent this year in part to pay for the multiplex.

See the full story in The Daily Graphic or subscribe to our online edition at pdfsubscription.bowesonline.com/33/

RM’s priorities need to be redefined

As Published in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic Friday June 13th 2008

With the current debate raging over funding for the Portage Multiplex, there are many concerns being raised that have not been properly addressed by our current RM of Portage la Prairie council.

Most importantly, where has the RM received their mandate to spend 8 million dollars of rural taxpayers money on a luxury facility that is not even located in their jurisdiction? While the last City election revolved around the Multiplex and city councilors were elected to proceed with the process, when was it ever mentioned that the RM taxpayers including commercial businesses and farmers would each be on the hook for thousands of dollars per year to fund this.?

The City and RM are quick to partner together on infrastructure projects where it is to the benefit of all parties and that is a great thing. But no RM resident could imagine that they would be expected to fund this luxury facility of 42 million dollars (or higher) that will simple replace existing facilities in the City of Portage and Southport. With no additional facilities of any major size being added, how is this really expected to be a boon for the regions economy?

It would seem that an expenditure as large as this should have had some taxpayer input, first off on whether the RM should be a part of it, secondly to what final dollar value, and finally how it should be divided among taxpayers.

When Oakville wanted to install artificial ice several years ago in an arena located in the RM and used primarily by RM residents, there were zero dollars available for this capital project from the RM. 100% of funds were raised by volunteers from local residents, businesses, and farmers. For that, everyone that uses the facility is thankful. To expect these same taxpayers to be on the hook for this mega project is simply unfathomable when they were told there was no money for these same facilities in the RM.

When these people wanted to get a project done, they stepped up with their checkbooks and skills and made it happen. For everyone that has said that the Portage Multiplex needs to be built and especially those in favor of going ahead at any cost, I challenge them to get their checkbooks out and make it happen. Don’t expect 100% of the project to be paid for with tax dollars and corporations donating other peoples money.

When a precedent is set by the RM on what is funded and what is not, there needs to be explanations made when these decisions are changed.

With the current disaster in the Rural Municipality regarding the condition of the gravel roads, most residents would like to see the 1.5 million allocated from the RM general reserve (rainy day) fund be put toward things that would make conditions in the RM better today rather than to the Multiplex.

I am sure city residents would understand the rural residents concerns if it took them 10 minutes to travel 5 kilometers down a gravel road in a full size 4WD pickup through mud and water. If they had to schedule their work shifts around the weather forecast. If they had to make alternate arrangements with the school bus because it isn’t safe for the bus to travel down many gravel roads. Maybe it takes having their business impacted because delivery vehicles refuse to come to their premises because of the road conditions before the realities of these long term funding decisions hit home.

With approximately a million tax dollars from each ward in the RM being allocated to the multiplex, rural residents don’t have to look very far to prioritise where they would want that same million dollars of taxes spent. Is it time for the RM to use some of their rainy day fund to repair the current conditions in the RM and make up for past poor decisions on the choice of gravel suppliers? The roads are in worse condition today that they were in the monsoon season of 2005.

With the borrowing abilities of the City and RM being maxed out by this project, what happens if a disaster strikes? How much other development or renewal projects will be put off for a decade? How many streets and sidewalks will not be repaired? If a large company wants to locate in the Portage area, will there be money to provide them with services they need? Is the sewage treatment plant up to specs for the future phosphate requirements of the Lake Winnipeg watershed? If anything else arises, what is the fallback plan?

All taxpayers are asking for is answers to many questions that should of been answered before their elected officials committed to a project that still has no business plan and no ideas as to what the annual operating costs or deficits will be.

With the current debate of this multiplex being limited to coffee shops and letters to the editor , a new website has been launched to foster discussion and allow all interested parties to have their say. Whether you are in favor or against, have location concerns, or simply want your voice heard, please goto www.portagemultiplex.com and make your opinions known !

Dwayne Leslie is a freelance writer and farmer in the Poplar Point Manitoba area

City’s heritage in danger of disappearing

Letter to the Editor in the Portage Daily Graphic June 13 2008

The Heritage Committee of Portage has done a great job in researching the Point of Interest plaques along the Crescent Lake walkway. They are preserving our history in a grand way.

The members of the city and rural council should take a page out of their book. Instead, they are bent on destroying what we have! An Island so unique that can’t be seen anywhere else. Why go against the recommendations of a study paid for, of course, and put the complex on our beautiful Island Park? Spend thousands of dollars on a causeway, which is iffy, and put added taxes on everyone.

There is a possibility we and lots of others would never set foot or see the completion of this building. Rethink what you are forcing on the people who put you in office and can vote you out. Change the location; it’s not too late to admit and correct the mistake.

Evelyn Smith

Portage la Prairie