City explores solution for Cottonwood woes

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This article was published 16/04/2019 (1829 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hanover School Division board chair Ron Falk said the school division is supportive of the City of Steinbach’s efforts to solve re-occurring problems along a sidewalk near the Steinbach Regional Secondary School, though city council members said little about the remedy he proposed on Tuesday night.

Falk addressed council in a letter received at yesterday’s council meeting. In it, he made a case for closing the sidewalk between McKenzie Avenue and Cottonwood Drive due to a variety of troubling issues including assaults, sexual activity, drug trafficking, drug use, and vandalism.

Falk noted the nearby high school’s ability to monitor and address the issues is limited, because it occurs off SRSS property.

Councillor Michael Zwaagstra, who chairs the city’s RCMP advisory committee, was the lone councillor to offer comment on Falk’s letter.

While Falk recommended closing the pathway, Zwaagstra said that wouldn’t be a recommendation from the committee, given that the space would still need to remain a public reserve. Storm sewer infrastructure rests below the sidewalk, which was first installed in 1992.

“It still has the potential to be an area that people congregate in. Whether the concrete happens to be there or not,” Zwaagstra said.

He suggested council explore imposing two-hour parking on Cottonwood Drive and Cottonwood Bend, similar to McKenzie Avenue, which he suggested would reduce the amount of students using the sidewalk.

City administration will now prepare a report on Zwaagstra’s suggestion for council’s review in the near future.

Falk told The Carillon on Wednesday the division would welcome action to make the space safer for students and others that use it.

He said he was unaware of the underground infrastructure issues that would make the closure challenging. He had hoped perhaps that neighbouring side yards could be expanded to eliminate the current public reserve entirely.

“Certainly just turning it into a greenspace wouldn’t solve the issue,” he said, agreeing with Zwaagstra’s explanation.

Still, some sort of action needs to occur, he said.

“There’s a lot of less than accepted behavior on the sidewalk,” he said.

“It’s just a situation that doesn’t seem to be going away.”

Area residents petitioned the city last year requesting action. A similar petitioning effort was undertaken in 2004, when similar concerns were identified.

Over the years, Falk said problems have only become worse.

He credited Steinbach RCMP but stressed that a more permanent solution needs to be found.

“They have been putting in extra monitoring, but obviously they can’t be there all the time.”

While he said the division would certainly be supportive of city exploring parking restrictions, he wasn’t convinced that approach would solve the problem. The issue is larger than just having vehicles parked on the adjacent streets, he surmised.

“I don’t think that would really make a big difference,” he said.

“It’s probably just an easy thoroughfare from one street to another.”