North Cypress-Langford Joined by Town of Neepawa for Zoning Conversation

The Municipality of North Cypress-Langford has a busy Town Council meeting this month with three separate delegations attending the meeting on separate, significant issues.

An ongoing project of the municipality of North Cypress-Langford, the update of the zoning bylaws to integrate the two former municipalities, has taken another step towards completion with its first public hearing. The Town of Neepawa, which is adjacent to North Cypress-Langford and shares a major highway artery, came forward with comments on how to best integrate those new zoning bylaws with its own. While the municipality is only responsible to take the comments under advisement, the town is a major part of the trading area for the municipality and they have for a long time worked together to provide a united front on many municipal issues. Before amalgamation, Langford and Neepawa also belonged to the same planning district.

Three representatives from Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure brought a delegation before Council to update them on their response to June’s tragic collision that took the lives of 17 people. Right now they are still gathering data about traffic patterns, average speeds, road conditions and signage and expect to have a draft report by the end of September. The immediate response from highways was to refresh the paint on the road, renew the rumble strips, and call additional attention to current signage. Their investigation will inform them as to what the next steps should be both in the short term and the long term, which may include options such as stoplights, speed limit restrictions, or major highway infrastructure changes.

They stressed that they are taking the situation seriously and understand the feeling of urgency, but they will not be making any changes to the intersection until they understand what impact those changes will have. Council took the opportunity to also call to their attention the effect that disrepair of other local roads was having on trade in the area, with heavy vehicles almost unable to use some roads.

Council also saw a delegation from a local landowner who had erected a gate across a municipal road allowance. Note that this was a road allowance, not a developed road, and the allowance in question lay between adjacent properties leased by the same landowner. This calls back to an ongoing problem in the municipality, that of ATV users from outside the community doing damage to leased Crown land and private property. The gate was an attempt to prevent further damage without having to fence each side of the road allowance separately, while still allowing access for the municipal fire department. Council also discussed other steps they could take to address the ATV issue.

Outside of the three presenters, the majority of Council's business was updates on ongoing issues and projects including the 2021 and 2022 audits, municipal land leases, staff training, and reports submitted by other organisations. CAO Trish Fraser put forward a few bylaw updates that resulted from combining older bylaws from the previous municipalities in order to further clean up the books. Councillor Jardine teased what he called an “explosive announcement” coming out of Prairie Mountain Health in the next week, but was unable to elaborate further at this time.