Ratepayers living within the boundaries of Mountain View School Division (MVSD) are preparing for an increase in the education portion of their property taxes.

At the division’s 2024-25 Public Budget Forum, Mar. 7, secretary-treasurer Lori Slepicka indicated the mill rate for the special levy will rise to 13.87 in the coming school year, an increase of one mill from the previous year.

While the effect the increase will have on individual ratepayers will depend on changes in assessment of their property over the past year, it will mean and additional $45.02 per $100,000 value on residential property, $26.01 on farm land and $65.03 on commercial property. The effect on farm property and residential properties will be mitigated by provincial rebates.

“The province is still promising a rebate of 50 per cent for residential and farmland, so that would be an increase of $13 for residential. On farmland the effect would be about $22.51 after the rebate,” Slepicka said.

The increase will raise an additional $2.98 million dollars for the 2024-25 budget, Slepicka said.

The additional funds will be used to increase educational assistant hours, while maintaining all other staffing levels, support informational technology infrastructure upgrades, increase the budgets for maintenance supplies and services and cover anticipated contractual obligations for both educators and non instructional staff.

“The contractual obligations are difficult to predict right now. Teachers’ bargaining is being done at a provincial level, so we have no idea what those salaries are going to come in at and the contract has been expired for a couple years already. And then our non-teaching union is also expired, so we don’t know exactly what that’s going to be for next year either,” Slepicka said. “So we’re putting what we think is a fair and reasonable amount into the budget to be fiscally responsible so that we have money to cover the salaries when we get the settlements of the contracts.”

The hope is the province will come through with extra funding to cover the added costs of the contract it negotiates with teachers, but even if it does not, the division will have to raise all the funds required for retroactive pay this year, she added.

“Our hope is that we won’t be, but (the province) are not yet indicating that they will cover those expenses,” Slepicka said, adding some provisions have been made in past years to help mitigate the effects of the new contracts. “We budget a little bit each year, so we just keep adding to it as we go along.”

Overall, MVSD’s balanced budget proposal calls for $50,816,934 each of revenue and income, up 8.1 per cent for last year.

On the revenue side, provincial grants are budgetted at $30,093,626, while municipalities will be on the hook for $18,449,048. First Nations revenue has been budgetted at $1,023,225, income from private organizations at $532,900, school division revenue at $478,420, federal revenue at $19,715 and income from other sources at $220,000.

At 57.08 per cent, the majority of expenditures come in the area of regular instruction, with student support services accounting for an additional 14.36 per cent. Maintenance comes in as the next highest budget line at 12.19 per cent of total expenditures followed by transportation at 7.12 per cent, instructional support at 3.65 per cent and administration at 3.11 per cent. Fiscal services at 1.76 per cent and community education at .23 per cent round out expenditure categories.

A vast majority of spending - 83.3 per cent - takes place to cover salaries and benefits, while the remaining 16.7 per cent is earmarked for services, materials and supplies.

“We spend slightly less than the average on personnel costs. We have more schools, smaller schools and our insurance costs and utility costs are slightly higher,” Slepicka said, adding a contributing factor is the fact that almost half of MVSD students require transportation.

In fact the division ranks the sixth highest total annual kilometers driven in the province, while sitting 20th out of 36 divisions in terms of enrolment.

“We have more buses, more mileage, which puts our supplies budgets up higher.”
When it comes to money spent in the classroom, there are two main areas of focus, MVSD superintendent and CEO Stephen Jaddock said.

In the area of student learning - which involves numeracy, literacy and credit attainment - protecting front line services by maintaining teacher ratios is the main focus for 2024-25, he said, along with adding education assistant hours.

“We are looking at a little bit of a pressure point on our educational assistance and this will bring us up to where we’re actually more in line with what we’re actually paying out for our educational assistance throughout the school year,” he said. “So we needed to do a little bit of a correction there. When we have students that come to our schools from other school divisions or they’re just new to the system and they require additional support then we do need to put in often times educational assistants to help with them, so we are wanting to make sure that our funding includes an increase for those hours.”

Other strategic initiatives include updating technology requirements, support for classroom supplies, instructional coaches, supporting industrial arts, human ecology and technical vocational instruction for Grades 7 to 12, reading recovery and alternative education, a high school apprenticeship facilitator and targeted professional development.

In the area of student well-being, strategic goals include safe and caring schools, student voice, indigenous education, and mental health and wellness.

The top budget focus for 2024-25 is proactive programming, Jaddock said.

“We want to make sure that our schools are continuing to participate in proactive programming. We do have an overall goal in Mountain View School Division to see a reduction in out-of-school suspensions, where we would like to make sure that students are in school and that we move to more of a restitution type model,” he said. “I mean there are situations where, for safety sake, we do need to have a not-in-school suspension, but we certainly want to reduce them overall, so that students can remain in school and have that contact time with the individual classroom teacher.”
With the provincial announcement around school nutrition, programming in that area is also a priority.

“To augment what is already happening in our schools, we have approximately an additional $275,000 to spend in that area,” he said. “The Province has stated that their goal is that no student should come to school hungry, and if they do, that they are being able to be looked at, looked after for breakfast and lunch. So that is the goal of the program in all of our 16 schools in Mountain View School Division.”

Budget attention was also given to the MVSD Student Voice Committee, resource and guidance, indigenous education framework, community connectors, social workers, staff wellness and mental health first aid.

“Coming through the COVID pandemic we find ourselves in what we call the echo pandemic, where the effects of the pandemic are now being felt and actually now coming out in the behaviors of students. Staff are on the front lines to have to deal with that. Also it’s no secret that many of the adults in our society have been affected by the pandemic, as well, and they need to remain healthy and they need to have support,” Jaddock said.

“So we want to make sure that we’re attending to that in Mountain View School Division.”

MVSD has until Mar. 15 to set its special levy and an adopted budget must be submitted to the province by Mar. 31.

Dauphin residents went to bed Thursday night knowing the remnants of three plowings in the past week and a half sat piled in the middle of Main Street and downtown corridors impeding traffic flow.

But when they woke up Friday morning, those menacing windrows had disappeared thanks to the overnight efforts of Dauphin’s Public Works crews. Even with the ridiculous amount of snowfall the community has received over the last few days, Dauphin operators - public and private - have shown themselves to be unrivalled in the level of service they provide.

Dauphin motorists are travelling about the community freely, while those in other communities continue to struggle in their trip towards spring.

The Life and Art Centre has been busy with projects this year. In addition to refinishing the wood floors on the main floor, the outdoor greenspace project is also well underway.

Memorial benches will be installed this spring with hopes of an outdoor amphitheatre installation in the near future.

Check out this week’s issue to find out what’s coming up at the LAC.

With all this snow fall, and all the closed roads lately, figured it was appropriate to talk about closed roads.

Did you know it is now illegal to drive on highways that are closed??

Read more in this week’s RCMP report.

Opaskwayak Cree Nation’s (OCN) Rhonda Head has accomplished a great many things in her musical career, but now she has achieved something that was a personal goal she had set for herself. Head was asked to sing the national anthem in Cree, as part of the Winnipeg Aboriginal Sport Achievement Centre (WASAC) Night during a Winnipeg Jets game.
“This is their sixth year for the WASAC Night and they contact various Indigenous singers and performers to be a part of that evening,” said Head. “When they contacted me and I immediately said yes.

The Minitonas Figure Skating Club showcased the work from their season with their year-end carnival, held on Friday (March 1) at the Minitonas and District Arena, coached by Chantelle Moshenko and Alison Burgess...

Shovels, snow blowers, trucks and tractors with blades along with graders and other heavy equipment were out in full force on Monday morning to clean up after the dump of snow the Valley - and much of the prairies - received in the prior 24 hours. Accurate snowfall amounts were not available from Environment Canada at press time.

Morley Bourns, with Dwight Bottrell throwing skip rocks, won the Dauphin Men’s Bonspiel, Sunday.

Bourns and his team, which also includes Steve Soloway and Nick Ogryzlo, beat Rob Rempel in the final of the first event, sponsored by Embroidery by Design.

Chad Sahulka was third and Barrett Procyshyn placed fourth.

Jeff Campbell and his team of Seth Gares, Blaine Johnson and Bart Michaleski won the second event, sponsored by McMunn and Yates Building Supplies, beating Jared Nimegeers in the final. Third place went to Cory Toews and in fourth place was Greg Thompson.

The third event, sponsored by Parkland Source for Sports, was won by the team of Kyle Forsyth, Jarvis Whyte, Trent Hill and Cody Hill. They beat Chris Belhumeur in the final. Mark Hadway was third and Brian Freiheit was fourth.

Rob Fisher and his team of Dave Campbell, Danny Scott and Brent Stykalo won the fourth event, sponsored by Baker Computers, beating Logan Devos in the final. Third place went to Luke Michaleski and in fourth place was Terron Stykalo.

Next up is the Dauphin Ladies Bonspiel, Mar. 8 to 10, which will feature a 1990s theme.

Julien Lopez battles for the puck behind the Killarney/Wawanesa net in game one of their best-of-three quarterfinal series, Feb. 27 in Dauphin.

Lopez scored twice and added an assist to lead the Clippers to a 4-2 victory, with Josh Yakielashek and Ronin Mouck adding singles.

Owen Chubka made 37 saves in picking up the win in goal. Tyron Sweetman scored four times to lead Dauphin to a 5-2 win in game two, Feb. 29, in Killarney.

Liam Chartrand had the other goal for the Clippers, which scored in the first minute of each period. Chubka made 31 saves in the win.

The Clippers will now face the regular-season champion Neepawa Tigers in the semifinals, with game one, Mar. 6, in Neepawa at 7:30 p.m.

Game two will be back in Dauphin, Mar. 13, at 7 p.m.

Eventually it will happen, but so far the Dauphin Kings just can’t seem to catch the Blizzard Jr. A Hockey Club.

After winning two of three games, last week, the Kings trail the Blizzard by four points, with two games in hand.

But the one loss the local junior A hockey club suffered last week was at the hands of the Blizzard, a 4-0 setback, last Tuesday in The Pas, a game in which the Blizzard outshot the Kings 45-15.

Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley felt it was one of the team’s worst games of the season.

“We weren’t very good. We talked about it being a good test for our group and we didn’t step up,” he said. “We weren’t good right from the back end to the front end. We could have played better. We’ve just got to clean up a few areas. It just came down to compete level and we didn’t compete as well as we wanted to that night.”

It was a quick turnaround for the Kings as they faced the Swan Valley Stampeders, the next afternoon at 12:30 p.m. on the Stamps’ school day.

Alex Senf scored twice and added an assist to lead the Kings to a 4-1 win.

“Seibs (goaltender Austin Seibel) played very well in net. Sheff (goaltender Cole Sheffield) just needed a break. He’s been playing quite a few games. Seibs stepped in, did a great job and we found a way to get two points,” Hedley said.

The Kings had their work cut out for them on Friday, as the Winnipeg Freeze took them to overtime, but Dauphin prevailed 4-3 on Logan Walker’s second goal of the game and third point.

Freeze netminder Braxton Burdeny was the story of the game, making 48 saves to keep his team in it.

“You have to give him credit, he was good. One of our strengths is how fast we play and how hard we work and when we do that, we’re a tough team to play against,” Hedley said. “In OCN, we weren’t a very tough team to play against. We weren’t hard on pucks. The last couple of games we were getting back to where we were.”

Because of the blizzard which hit most of southern Manitoba, Sunday, the Kings were unable to travel to The Pas, for another game against the Blizzard.

The Kings have three big matches on the card this week, with a game in Virden against the MGEU West Division-leading Oil Capitals tonight.

On Friday, they visit the Neepawa Titans, before hosting the Blizzard, Saturday at Credit Union Place.

All three games begin at 7:30 p.m.

With the season winding down, these are three big games the Kings will need to win.

“If we could run the table that’d be great. We’re correcting a few things. We’ve got to clean up a few areas. We’ve got to be better in our D zone. Just the consistency part of our game needs to be there right through our lineup,” Hedley said. “We’ve got seven games to work at it and get it going.”

Kings court:

After this week, the Kings will have four games remaining on their schedule - Mar. 12 at home against the Portage Terriers in a makeup game, Mar. 15 against the Winnipeg Blues in Winnipeg, and Mar. 16 in Selkirk against the Steelers. Sunday’s game in The Pas has yet to be rescheduled.