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    The next general municipal election is Wednesday, October 28, 2026. All municipalities, towns and cities in Manitoba will go to the polls that day to elect Mayors, Reeves and Councillors. School boards will hold Trustee elections that day as well. The only exception is that municipal elections will be held in Winnipeg Beach, Dunnottar, and Victoria Beach on Friday, July 24, 2026. All jurisdictions in this paper’s coverage area will face similar election realities.

    For some areas, positions will likely go unfilled and appointments will have to be made. All areas will fall short again in the way of infrastructure funding unless drastic changes come about. One change could be a major increase in taxes. Although it was likely a glib comment, but more than one persona said that taxes would have to double to cover the shortfall in road, street, water and sewer upgrades that are needed or expected.

    Another change that might keep taxes closer to current levels is if voters lower their expectations. Yet another possibility is for the federal and provincial governments to allocate more money towards crumbling infrastructure. That of course means higher taxes. When it comes to roads, I believe that all jurisdictions could be a lot more diligent in patching and replacement surfaces.

    For example, there is a simple machine available that cleans out potholes and pavement breaks, applies new material and packs the patch into place. In the hands of an experienced operator, it’s a quite efficient machine. With an inexperienced operator, not so much. Experienced or not, there are problems. Potholes and surface breaks, be they from vehicle wear and tear, water line repairs or frost problems, need to be fixed sooner, rather than later.

     Without a machine on hand all summer and possibly owned by two or more close by jurisdictions, the work simply gets further and further behind. Councils need to bite the bullet and get the job done. I have also never seen proper street cleaning after the patching, so chunks of pavement and pebbles simply lay around and traffic grinds the debris into the pavement surface aggravating the wear and tear.  It amounts to sloppiness and negligence if the truth be known. I have also heard it said that some municipalities try to maintain too much pavement and I agree with that.

    A well-maintained gravel road can be smoother than a poorly maintained paved road. Some urban areas don’t even own a road grader so maintaining any gravel surfaces depend on neighbouring RMs to squeeze the grading jobs into their schedule. Another problem is municipalities are still feeling the side effects of the government enforced amalgamation from a few years back. The NDP government of the day decided that all municipalities had to have 1,000 people, which in many cases made sense. At the same time, more government regulations keep getting piled on making it more difficult to get qualified CAOs.

   Long term planning is needed to run a municipal organization and there seems to be little help from government. In fact, the province is more of a hindrance than a help in many cases. To set up a sub-division to try and alleviate the housing shortage, can take years to get approval from a dozen or more government departments. Trust me, I know as I served as mayor of a town in two different terms. There has to be meetings and studies and more meetings and decisions get severely delayed.

    If a town or RM decides to even just lower a speed zone, they should be able to give notice and change the speed signs. That would be too simple and might lower some hours for a government employee. Speed zone changes are almost impossible to achieve. This column sounds somewhat negative about local politics. I think the readers of this newspaper have the built-in confidence and competence to be a town/municipal councillor who would bring all councillors together and bring all citizens together to get the right things done (and convince taxpayers that higher taxes may being the common interest of getting the right thinks done).

    It would be better and easier to get candidates if the province would let locals make their own decisions. Simply put, we need more consensus, more local decisions and less nasty complaints from voters. One wise person recently said we need to have situation where we criticize ideas not people. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Banner & Press staff.