Niverville’s council met on the morning of October 8 to discuss a variety of items on the town’s agenda.
The Trouble with Muskrats
In other news, council has become aware of a new problem in the lakes of local developments—muskrats. The problem, CAO Eric King says, is their sheer numbers and the damage they do to the lake borders as they burrow into the ground, causing it to cave in on itself.
At this point, they believe there are about 100 muskrats taking up residence in the Fifth Avenue Estate lakes, 200 in The Highlands lakes, and another 200 at the wetlands. For this reason, council will be renting traps and two town employees have volunteered their time to catch and release the muskrats to another area outside of Niverville.
“They are [wearing away] at the banks and eating the bulrushes, and so they’re slowly destroying the natural environment,” says King. “So we’re moving them away.”
Manitoba Winter Games Bid
King also informed council that town administration is in the final stages of preparing a bid to host the 2022 Manitoba Winter Games. In order to bid, the Town of Niverville would agree to take responsibility for any deficit associated with the games, to contribute at least $75,000 to cover capital expenditures, and other conditions as laid out by the Manitoba Winter Games.
King indicated that the $75,000 payment would not come from the town coffers but rather from private partnerships interested in seeing the Games come to Niverville.
Council voted in favor of making the bid. The announcement for a host community will be made in January.
“There’d be [about] 700 athletes… and they come with [family] so we’d have 3,000 to 4,000 extra people in town that weekend,” says King. “There’s lots of economic spin-offs.”
Report from the Mayor
Mayor Myron Dyck presented a report on some of the things he’s been busy with in the past weeks. He was recently invited to speak to more than 100 Grade Four students at the Niverville Elementary School, as part of a unit covering government.
As well, Dyck shared news from the Winnipeg Metro Region (WMR), a collaboration of leaders from 18 municipalities working together to create large-scale solutions in the region.
“The WMR, right now, is the only [capital region] who is including the Indigenous communities in our planning,” Dyck says. “They live among us and yet they’ve been excluded from so many [discussions] in terms of climate, water, septic, and things like that.”
Because of the WMR’s collaboration with the Chiefs of the Southern Chief’s Organization over the past two years, award-winning international filmmakers were provided a government grant to create a documentary capturing the journey of the building of trust and collective collaboration between these indigenous and non-indigenous leaders.
The process of working together resulted in the formal signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the chiefs, mayors, and reeves of the WMR on March 1 of this year. The debut screening of the documentary will take place on March 10 at the Park Theatre in Winnipeg.
Other Business
Town council signed off on the sale of their previous town office location at 86 Main Street. The property and building were sold to Wallace, Wallace and Edwards for $200,000 with a possession date of January 15, 2020. The sale came in $100 higher than the asking price.
A request was made by Performance Insulation for variances to their lot in the Niverville Business Park. The requested yard variations would match council’s previous zoning bylaws before they were changed.
If granted, the variation would permit the company to add 6,480 square feet of space to an existing building and amalgamate the products that are currently being stored at a warehouse in Steinbach into one location in Niverville.
Council voted unanimously in favor of the variation request.
Winter snow-clearing for the CRRC and high school parking lots was tendered out to D&M Rentals, the only company that responded to the town’s request for bids. The company will provide parking lot clearing, snow removal, and sanding at a cost of $4,500 for the season. D&M Rentals will be responsible to have snow cleared away within 48 hours of a snowfall.
Finally, the tender for the town’s 2020 flower contract was awarded to Giz’s Garden Centre for a cost of $4,133.