← Steinbach City Council Reporting

Housing and development

Watch the housing and development video

0:00:04 Brad Unger All right, so I'm going to start off. We waste a little— not waste, use a little bit of my time to say I think what we're doing tonight is awesome. And if I think back to how Steinbach would have started, I bet you it was a group probably this size that was all the citizens of Steinbach. So this is very cool. All right, so yes, start off with the first question, increasing low barrier transitional affordable housing. I guess for me, I actually was a part of the inboard for a short period of time, so I kind of know part of what that plan was, and there's a lot to like there. I think they're onto something good, and I think that whole idea needs to be looked at. So if you have a chance to check out the in-plan, I don't have time obviously in a minute and 20 seconds to go over it, but I think there's some important things that I think everybody in this room has seen that we do have a homeless community in Steinbach, And I think everybody in this room has some responsibility to, as citizens, we have a responsibility. I would say that's a good part of it. We have responsibility in this community. I think the churches of Steinbach can be stepping up and need to step up, especially with winter coming, and offer maybe a space. There's ways to do that. We all as a community work together, and I think we can do that. Thank you. City Council honestly has a very small role as other than— for that one, other than supporting some of the things that are already started. Maybe we need City Council to just get out of the way of some things that are already started. Question number 2, yeah, I think for me in talking to some of the residents of Steinbach, I think one of the big concerns is they know that housing is needed. Their concern is the multiplexes in established neighborhoods. So I think the multiplexes, we need to keep those in newer neighborhoods because there's people who move into and have lived in established neighborhoods for a long time and aren't going to appreciate having a multiplex popping up maybe in their neighborhood. Number 3 isn't on the screen, so do I get extra time for that? Oh, here it is. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

0:02:18 Facilitator Go ahead, Mitch.

0:02:18 Mitesh Kumar Okay, well, just testing my gear. Very good. Well, thank you for the question. I've been in the community since July 2nd meeting residents, been almost 5,500 houses so far. Housing and homelessness, I think city is a little bit late on tackling the issue related to homelessness. I moved here 10 years back, but things were a little better, and I think it has worsened in the past few years, and I personally feel we are a little bit late. It's good that recently they have approved Steinbach Outreach with 30, 60 beds, I think, and I think there is room for more. We might have to wait and see how that goes once that facility comes in, what kind of help it brings to this issue. I have met Steinbach Outreach and also Community Outreach and also the other side, the Inn, who's also planning to work on the same sort of issues. They kind of tackle 2 different aspects of it. So I'm, in general, I'm supportive of any sort of, you know, options which can resolve this issue. Affordable housing development— I have again been in so many different communities, you know, neighborhoods, and people are upset. Some of them are selling their houses because of the high-density buildings coming in those areas. So I'll be a strong voice for not having high density in our regular neighborhoods, if it impacts the quality of life in any way for those, you know, units coming in those areas. And that doesn't mean that we don't need more housing, it just needs to be in the area where they need to be. Absolutely. The third question was about managing growth. So yeah, like any— I will be always supportive of growth, As long as it can create jobs and it brings and tries to solve the housing problem you have. We need to focus on Granny Suite and— Okay,

0:04:35 Nicholas Goertzen I'm a bit blind. I didn't bring my glasses because I thought I would look cooler without them. So affordable housing has been a big thing that we've kind of discussed when I was going door-to-door. Younger families, especially working families, people my age, they're very upset right now about the lack of housing in Steinbach. They want to be able to afford rent and groceries as well. I think council has a real say in that. We can make it more affordable to develop these, these types of houses. And it's just about trying to make— take down the yellow tape, the red tape, and just make it easier for developers to develop. Thank you. And as well as homelessness, I've talked to Steinbach Community Outreach. I've talked to the Inn. I'm very supportive of the Inn project. I really think that, like I think Brad said, we have to get out of the way. We have to make it easy to develop here. We have to allow people to solve the issues, and where City of Steinbach can help, I think we should be more proactive in that regard. I think there was a 13, 14 churches told us that we need to do more as a city, as like council. So I think that really means something. And then as for growth, like we need to grow third spaces, we need to grow, we need to allow businesses to be businesses, we need to provide affordable spaces for people to use and for entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs to start businesses in Steinbach. So I think just allowing all of these things that happen, we'll build a culture here. We'll build something better and we'll be a happier city, in my opinion. Still have time?

0:06:19 Brad Unger I'll take those 20 seconds.

0:06:21 Nicholas Goertzen If I could read, I could probably—

0:06:28 Brad Unger Cost shared.

0:06:29 Nicholas Goertzen Yeah, and I think I'll say I'm happy that us candidates are here, and I wish the others were here, but we'll try to answer your questions. Would you like to add anything?

0:06:43 Gary Dyck Yeah, so for number one, I would say I would just put it out there. I've met with Steinbach Community Outreach and Sergeant Maxwell from the RCMP and the shelter too, the inn, and I would say they've done a really good job of working on things in the last months, and unless someone else can show me a better option with getting shovels in the ground, I would say we need to support this inn. We need to go ahead with it. They have an amazing plan for low barrier. They have an amazing plan even for preventing homelessness. If someone can be kept off the street and quickly just taken into a shelter without ever experiencing homelessness, that increases the odds right there. So let's get the shovels in the ground. Then I would say, and I love the dignity part, my motto is safe, caring community. And that includes the general public, but that also includes definitely the homeless people and making sure we're taking care of them. Affordable housing, that's a big part of my platform, is I think we need to develop some kind of ecosystem for the builders, the developers with the city listening to the residents, listening to what is the needs of the people, what is the needs of our neighborhoods, our communities, and being driven by that, not just being driven by the developers' ideas and their idea for cash, But by what our community actually needs. That should be— it should be responsive to the local housing market and needs. So I'm right for that. And then the third one is, yeah, the shared cost, the cost of growth between developers and residents. That's a big one. Like the Park Hill resident, I heard some of you talked about that too. Somehow there's a miss there. There was at one point on the table where they're supposed to have an outlet towards Bush Farm Road for all that development. Not development, but with the developer, it was supposed to be developed and somehow it got dropped. Very convenient. I'm not sure what happened there, and now we're seeing all kinds of traffic, little kids going to and from school, and it's got to be shared better. Thank you.

Health and wellbeing

Watch the health and wellbeing video

0:00:00 Facilitator What do you think is the most important thing that the province can do to help?

0:00:00 Mitesh Kumar Well, so health is in a way like a provincial subject, but I think partnership is the most important, and I think that's where we have been missing. Many times when I was at doors, residents feel like they're not being— probably there is a different sort of thought process or ideology, and this community or this area is being not supported as much from the province, is what I heard from the residents. And it seems like seniors are the most affected. And I— what city could do is like what I've been proposing. I've been to the doors, I've met so many seniors, some of them just living by themselves. Healthy aging is one of the things like we need to work, you know, like little things. So I'm actually— I'm working on to do forums every year if I'm elected on on having things related to seniors housing and aging. And also I'm building pressure, I've already reached out to the ministers and different leaders and asked us to have a task force on the, you know, seniors housing and as such. So partnership is key. We have heard some recently good news about like now city is talking about actually a task force, but it's more broader health services, which is good. And some of the concerns related to seniors housing and as such are also covered in that task force which is being talked. So I'm happy that I tried to take this issue door-to-door from last 3 months, and there is some development. Maybe it's not what I did, it's maybe that's what the community needed, that's what the community is asking for. I was there in that, you know, area, and I can feel that, like, everyone wants healthcare to improve. I got a family doctor after 8 years of wait time, so I still thank the provincial government that there was some help in that sense. Thank you.

0:02:08 Facilitator Thank you. Nick.

0:02:11 Nicholas Goertzen Yeah, a big thing about my campaign was doctor recruitment. I think right now people are having tons of issues finding a family doctor. I think that's the one thing that council can kind of have impact on. I know people talk about they want to regionalize the hospital and everything, but that's provincial, like, you can't do much about that. But currently, council, they're trying to bring in all these new students and doctors, and they're trying to entice them to come here. The way they do it is they, like, bring them to nice restaurants, show them the golf course, like, look, you can build a family here. People my age graduating, 30 years old, they don't really care about that. They want to understand, like, okay, I may have kids, can my kids— is there childcare here? Can I get a house? Can I get a— like, what can I do? I don't have a girlfriend, can I get a girlfriend or a husband?

0:03:03 Mitesh Kumar Like Steinbach, of course.

0:03:06 Nicholas Goertzen So it's like, how can, how can we incentivize those, those doctors and those students to stay here long-term? So that's, I think, a huge impact on what we can do. And beyond that, community and organizations is a big part of what we need to do as a council. We need to work with places like Pat Porter. We need to work with organizations like Envision. I've talked to both organizations, and they're, they're in dire need of more support from, from council, from the city, whether it's through grants or just acknowledgments. Like, how can we help the city have more accessibility for people experiencing health issues? And I think that's a very, very big thing that current council is not that great at. We're not great at relationships. Thank you. And I think we can do a lot more to bring people together and work with them and understand their issues they're experiencing. And that's what I hope to bring if I get elected. And yeah, I don't think I have time for anything else.

0:04:07 Gary Dyck All right. Yeah, this one's very close to me. I work at the Bethesda Regional Health Center. I talk with the nurses every day. Some of them confide in me with their thoughts and their issues and the challenges, and I see that very intimately. And it's a hard place, and I really love, I think a key thing is primary care in our community, getting people that care they need before it gets too serious, you know, the clinics where you can see your doctor, you can have a family doctor, and get that checked out, whatever it is, before it gets too far. And the research, the stats on that are just amazing. With primary care taking care of everyone, you have a lot less need in the hospital, ER, the wait times, that all goes down. It starts with that and that's often missed. And so there's probably things we can do as a city council to encourage primary care clinics to see them more built. We've seen a little bit of that. Jane Philpott wrote a great book called Health for All. That's the book. Yeah, and then it kind of goes in with this, number 2 is those green spaces. So I do get to see these new doctors, the interns, and talk with them and what's their first impressions of Steinbach, and they often mention the green spaces, what they've seen on the street, and the friendliness of the people, and that personal connection. That's also a key thing. So if you ever see someone that looks like a doctor, they usually don't wear their white coats on the street, but say hello. And then of course, to provide opportunities. I love low-cost opportunities for recreation. I love rock. I love our tennis courts. Just, you know, the more we can do for people just to make it very accessible in their neighbourhood, within walking distance, to get out and do something. Paths. I love the Bush Farm Trail. More of that. And then finally, where— with volunteerism, that's a good question. We're working on that. I think Beth has a foundation, is a great thing that we could probably partner, empower with. That's a big thing I believe in, is our local organizations. We have wonderful grassroots organizations. How can we empower them? Not let them do their thing, but empower them.

0:06:31 Facilitator Brad, you're on.

0:06:31 Brad Unger Good, yeah. Oh, I turned the mic off. There it is. Oh, there we are. Okay, good. Um, yeah, no, appreciate this question as well. So I spent the bulk of my time this evening actually in that corner over there because I'm not good at time management, uh, enticing doctors to come. Well, Not a ton, just as city council, but when we have the backing of the community behind us, that makes a big difference. So is there anybody here from Steinbach? If you would put up your hand, please. Nobody. Everybody. All right, perfect. So yeah, it's going to require the backing of the community saying, look, we need to have doctors. Maybe we can bring in some nurse practitioners. It's a lower, lower cost, a health professional, help with urgent care. So I think that's very important that we have that as well. Are there little things to do? We talked about volunteering. This is interesting. Volunteering at the ER. Making the ER a better place for people when they come in. We just recently spent about 14 hours at the ER, which I'm sure there are a lot of you here that experience that. We're not there because the medical professionals aren't working hard. They're working really hard. It's just part of the system we're trying to fix. So what if that experience in the ER would be better? What if we had people there You know, doing some sort of music therapy, or there's a variety of things that could happen right in the ER that could make it a more pleasant experience for people there. So I think that's very important. I think we also need to have a talk about mental health here in Steinbach. I think there's a lot of families and individuals dealing with that. I think if we can work on that, bringing in programs, bringing in professionals who can help with that, probably affects just what every family already is at. I really firmly believe if people have a purpose and meaning in their lives, I think we can do that as well. Give people opportunity. We talk about volunteering. There's other ways. Let's get people in this community an opportunity to be involved, have meaning and purpose in their lives. Thank you.

Transportation and mobility

Watch the transportation and mobility video

0:00:03 Nicholas Goertzen Yeah, so mobility, I've been hearing a lot about e-scooters, a lot about the dangerous children driving around and murdering people. I think it does come down to infrastructure, about how we develop our city, how we build the paths, how we build bike lanes. We tend to do it as cheaply as possible and as fast as possible and don't do whatever we are allowed to get away with. So it's— I walk most places and I understand how we're lacking in a lot of this regard. So I definitely want to improve that. I want to make sure that we're actually following standards and the best standards. I used to— I worked with Strongtown, so I know what the best standards are. I know how we can improve those, and I think that's something I want to really focus on and something I will do. Mm-hmm. So for transit, I— let's do it. Let's get a— let's work with that CEC and let's get something going. And I think that it was in the circle they said it would cost us a person $40 a year in taxes, which is not a whole lot. I think we've— this event center probably costs more for us. So yeah, if we can get not only buses but just like work with organizations like Pat Porter, like I know that they need more transit. Envision, they need more transit. Mm-hmm. It helps the overall community because it lets people go to work, it lets them go to school, it lets them spend their money, get around. Like, it's not something that's just for people who want to go grocery shopping. Like, it gets you to point A to point B, wherever that may be. So I think a growing city needs transit, and it's something that I'm pro and I'm gonna work towards. Thank you.

0:01:55 Gary Dyck Yeah, I'll start with the transit then too. Yeah, what Nicholas said, I totally agree that I love strong town It's a great thing and a great book if you ever get a hold of that. I'm a book reader, as you can tell. I keep talking about books. But yeah, we need to get that done. It's not a big cost. Let's just get it done and let's go. Let's get people going where they need to go. And that freedom, that economic benefit is huge. The mobility issue, yeah. Why are we waiting for provincial legislation? Like, we can do something now already. I know there's the idea, well, we might have to change some things, but I think there's some things we could do already, and let's not wait till someone's killed. That's too late. That is too late. So I say let's, let's move on that with the e-scooters and what is safe and getting helmets on. And the multi-use path, I love that. I am a walker. I live downtown Winnipeg— or sorry, Steinbach. Downtown Steinbach. I always think of Steinbach still as a town, not a city, but I live downtown and I walk everywhere. Even when I worked at the museum, I would go down that nice bike path through 80 Penner Park, and in winter I had permission from the golf course. I would take my e-bike, I had a fat bike, and went right through the golf course to the back gate of the museum, around the windmill, and there to my office. I loved that, the best commute. So I love multi-use trails, and there's a good idea in that group too of lanes, like, okay, for the fast scooters and such, you have a lane like they do in Winnipeg and some places, and then for the walkers you have a lane too. Everyone can be in their lane and be safe. There's a lot of great ideas. Holland, I've been to Holland, I love it. They have so much wonderful multi-use trails, and the people there are biking all the time, even with all their rain. It's like half the time it's raining, pouring. So let's build it, and people will use it, and it will be good for health, it'll be good for the city, and that's a— I'm a firm believer in multi-use trails.

0:04:00 Facilitator Thank you. Brad.

0:04:00 Brad Unger All right, yeah, so I want to say I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak on these things as well, as this is a major topic that keep coming— kept coming up, transit and mobility, when I'm canvassing. So I will also start with mobility and say, you know, it is really unfortunate that we have high foot traffic areas, especially for children, where there's no sidewalks. And if we want to be a strong city, we need to have— make sure our children are safe. And we also have concerns where there's people parking in ways where they're congesting streets, and again, where children don't have sidewalks and they're trying to walk through the traffic. So we need to do a major study in Steinbach and see why do we not have sidewalks in those areas, how we can keep that congestion from happening, because we need to keep our children safe. That is, that is very important. Old Town Road, any of you driven down that recently? Enjoy biking? It's kind of a death trap. It sure feels like it. And so I think it's very important that we look at a way to make that— it connects bike paths down Hespler. It connects the bike path out to Ramsdale or Lansdale, out to the park anyway, rather than having to go all the way around to other ways. So I think that's very important as well. I think we have many people who appreciate biking and walking in town. So let's make it as safe as we possibly can. Then as far as transportation goes, I could be really controversial right now and say something opposite, but I wouldn't be true to my heart. I would say yes, we need to— we have a population, an aging population that will benefit very much from a greater level of transportation than is offered right now. I think we need to have common spots In the city where people can walk to and get picked up by transportation. We need to do a good job of figuring out if we're going to build— or if we're going to build this infrastructure, if we're going to build the transit, let's make sure it's again in a safe area for seniors to get to it.

0:06:05 Mitesh Kumar Okay, thank you. So again, I've been to so many neighborhoods in the last 2-3 months, and the topic e-scooters surprisingly was one of the top topics people are concerned that nobody needs to be dead before we do something. Mm-hmm. So I literally went back, I went to MPI, I went to city, I went to RCMP, asked those questions like, what are current rules? How do we— like, people are— many residents are not aware. There is a— and then we found some update on that saying that probably we are waiting for province to make rules. Morden did some sort of work ahead even before anyone else did. Why we can't do that? Why are we waiting for something to happen on that side? Also, I see kids not giving up on these things. This is actually future. Active transportation, people are going to use it. We will have to work around and find solutions more enforcement as such in future so that everyone is aware. Education and awareness would be the key in future to solve some of the early-related concerns about the e-scooters. Transit— I ran on a transit campaign back in 2018. I was just here, I picked Steinbach thinking it's a, you know, third largest city, and I defaulted that will be a transit, but I was surprised. And then since then I've been listening, uh, residents about, you know, having no option, many kids not able to connect, you know, to the job, or workers. People can't afford a second vehicle. People— there are people in situations they can't drive, they don't like to drive injured. So, so many people in similar sort of situations. So, you know, it's great. I'll be the voice who's going to be first in the line to say yes if the subject comes to the council, if I'm elected. And that means that in principle you know, to go ahead and find the resources to work on this. Of course, the transit is, I think, more important than some of the, I think, airport or other things we were talking just a few months back. That's also good, but transit should be the first. It's going to help so many people.

Quality of life

Watch the quality of life video

0:00:03 Gary Dyck Yeah, I'll start off just with that. This is something that I have to think a little more about, but I'll just say what I think right now and when I first hear about this. Yeah, definitely the low-cost recreation, making something available for people, and even just a general place. Like, you know, a lot of European cities have wonderful plazas, you know, of a common public space where everyone multigenerational can come and get together. I love the multigenerational gathering space. We don't have that. And somehow I think a cultural and arts center, I think we could probably do that there. We see some of that there already. It's tight, it's small at the Steinbach Arts Council building, but I think, yeah, I think we could do something multi-generational where people can come together, low cost, no cost, whether you're part of a program maybe there, you know, you can do buy into that, but maybe just the gathering space. of some sort that's more open and low-cost for everyone, that would be probably number one on my list for this initiative. And just, I think we need more green spaces too. I look at Winnipeg even, and there's all these wonderful parks and the Seine River. You know, they got these little paths and woods and such. It's just so beautiful, these green spaces they've been able to build. And we haven't— we're missing out, and we're just getting bigger and bigger, and it feels like we're getting behind. And so I'd like to keep that. Thank you. in the forefront. We need to keep those green spaces. So those woods, any woods we have left around Steinbach or on the margins of Steinbach, let's not take those trees down. Let's, let's make something out of that. There's these beautiful little places we have right along Lettingham GM. There's that creek, and I hope we can keep that and even add to it. So many things like that on the margins. Right now is the time to keep it safeguarded for the future, for our children, our grandchildren. That's it.

0:01:56 Facilitator Brad.

0:02:05 Brad Unger Okay, well, there we go. This is, uh, this is first and foremost actually part of my campaign is, uh, is to talk about something that's a little self-serving because I have, uh, young, young kids. Now they're in their early 20s, but they're still— I still consider them young. I think one of the big things we need to look at is the youth in our community, and my concern is that they are— a lot of them are not seeing Steinbach as their future. It's their past, their present, but not their future. And that's a big— that should be a big concern for all of us. If our youth are taking a step, especially if they're taking, let's say, entrepreneurship to Winnipeg or another community, we miss out on that as a community. We miss out on that. And so we need to build more opportunities. That's jobs. Thank you. For our youth, we need to look for opportunities for them. Again, opening the doors for more entrepreneurship opportunities here, things for them to do. I heard some people here mention there's nothing to do, and if there's anything to do here, it costs money. Even like the aquatic center, if you go there expecting to use it, often you go there and it's packed because it's people from maybe Winnipeg or somewhere else. We need to make sure that our young people have something to do so they're not on their phones. Thank you. and/or playing games or whatever the case is. So that's very important to me. We want our youth to have a purpose and a meaning here. That's our future. That's very important. Secondly, it's tough for me to quantify it exactly. I mean, I mentioned before about the importance of looking after the homeless here, but again, it comes down to what we are as Steinbach. And I think about our rich history, and I think some of that is a little bit forgotten. I think we've forgotten how This place came to be and what the spirit of this community is. And I think I'd like to see that revitalized, whether that means when people move here, there's an opportunity for them to, to, you know, there are people reaching out to anyone who comes into the city and going, we want you to be involved, be a part of Steinbach. I actually thought about bringing a name tag and have y'all wear it, that we are Steinbach here.

0:04:12 Mitesh Kumar Thank you. So what are the 2 things? Yeah, again, every area I've been to, Brant and all the streets, one thing if I would say to residents that yet from this week you're gonna not have much noises around from the vehicles. You're not gonna have racing on the nearby streets, which is unsafe. I think that'll be one thing they'll be very happy about. So we need to find solutions to that, and I live just by the Main Street. I talked to some youth and It seems like they're looking for some sort of recreation in many situations as we're, you know, talking about it. So there has to be balance. We need to— this issue has been there from last 20, 25 years. It just didn't go away. Many of the kids around from other neighborhood towns come here for this, observe. So that's one thing will be a great help to, you know, bring happiness in this community, I would think. Thank you. The second one, jobs. I've been voicing for local jobs for Gen Z. One of the toughest things I found was to not find youth at the doors. I could only find— like, I've been to almost 5,500 houses, met about 2,000 residents, maybe 20 or 25, and they're also disconnected from this whole campaign and election process and as such. So when I talk about jobs, it also links to the economic development. Apparently right now, Steinbach doesn't have any economic development department, to be honest, or any funded sort of setup. So we need to take that seriously and try to find options here for our kids to work, and maybe that— and that'll be a great help to bring happiness to them. Many of them go to Winnipeg to work. Many of the opportunities we are missing, they are going to Nairnville or other local, you know, towns. So These would be 2 things I think could be a great help, you know, overall happiness. We can always talk about little things. We have Event Center, we have, you know, Path Forward activities going on, so many other things we can look into. Thanks.

0:06:30 Nicholas Goertzen One of my biggest things I ran on was loneliness. Especially within younger people, younger families. I'm sure it happens with older people too. Like, everyone is lonely. It's been an issue the past couple of years. It's been increasing. It's an epidemic. So I think one of the greatest things we can do is build a better community, better— more third spaces, more things for people to do and get together. And we can do that by even just like getting to know your neighbor. Throw a block party. Do, um, just, like, when you go to the mail, go talk to somebody. Like, it's lots of stuff that you can do. But as council, I think we can start by just making it easier for people to start these events and having support for them and create spaces. There's amazing spaces already within the Pat Porter, the SAC. Like, they do an amazing job and they're running out of space. They have— they can't accept more people and they need to expand, but they don't have it in the budget. They don't have— it'll be years from now till they expand. And they said it's just really about affordable spaces that they can turn into a place that they can build culture around and they can have community. So that's like one of the big things for me. And secondly is just, as a city, we need to be more— like, we shouldn't be experiencing racism. We shouldn't be racist. Like, we should be accepting of everybody. We should be representing everybody. And And I think that's something that Steinbach is still working on, and we're getting there. And I think it starts at the top, and you can work the way down. But we need to be more cognizant of who's in our city, who we represent, and how we represent them. And just really, it really speaks a lot when you're listening to somebody and you can understand what they're saying, no matter what politics you believe in. Just just listening and being nonpartisan and just being a good neighbor, a good person. So those would be the top 2 things for happiness. And—