John Funk has served on Niverville’s town council for more than 30 years, longer than anyone else in the town’s history. He was first elected in a 1988 by-election when two seats opened up midterm, seats which were heavily contested when an unprecedented 11 candidates threw their hats into the ring.
To put it mildly, the town has changed epically during his 30-year tenure.
“When I first ran, my boys were just learning to walk, and my parents were aging,” says Funk. “So I ran on those two platforms: we needed senior housing and we needed sports facilities that would accommodate the children that are coming up.”
Funk smiles when he looks back at his naiveté when it comes to his expectations for how long it would take to bring a personal care home to Niverville.
“Anytime we went to the government, we said we needed a personal care home, and they would say, ‘You don’t have the seniors,’” he explains. “We were the youngest town in Manitoba. You have to have a certain percentage of seniors [for a PCH]. So it was slow going.”
Niverville—which is still the youngest town in Manitoba, incidentally—started by helping to develop Silver Courts, a complex of 55+ life lease apartments. The town owned the land, and they negotiated to sell it to the corporation that built the facility.
Next came the Niverville Credit Union Manor, with both assisted living and supportive living apartments, and then the Heritage Life Personal Care Home. Funk says it was very rewarding when that final piece in the senior housing puzzle fell into place.
So what about the second plank of his original platform, bringing more sports facilities to Niverville?
“That has been partly met,” he says. “The first year I was on council, I found out that the farm where Hespeler Park is, there by the lagoon… well, the lagoon was leaching [into the soil]. So we would pay every year a subsidy to [the farmer] because his crop was poor 100 feet around the lagoon. I said, ‘This is terrible, how long are we going to do this?’ If we’re paying him anyhow, we might as well own the land. So I convinced council at that time to buy the land. It took a couple of years before we moved on it, but then we got a grant, which I think was in 1997, and we put the park in—the ball diamonds and the [first] two soccer pitches. That was the start of Hespeler Park.”
In the years since, Hespeler Park has grown to include more soccer pitches, a walking trail with a variety of play features, a picnic shelter, and a splash pad. More improvements are still to come, with council having recently received bids for a new state-of-the-art play area.
But what happens in the winter? Funk says that one of the biggest concerns he hears from residents is that young families with preschool kids need somewhere to go when the temperatures drop and the snow piles up.
“I’ve heard that over and over,” says Funk. “And I’ve heard that in winter if our kids are not in school sports or if they are not in hockey, there’s nothing to do.”
At the first planning session after the 2014 election, Funk says that he made a suggestion that helped get the Community Resource Centre (CRC) project off the ground. He pointed out that the town was receiving about $100,000 every year from Manitoba Hydro, on account of Niverville’s proximity to the Bipole 3 line to the south and east of town. Funk proposed that this would be enough to pay off the debt on a $5 million contribution to the CRC, meaning that the town could make their commitment without having to raise taxes.
The CRC, Funk says, is going to solve the problem of families having nowhere to go during the winter months. With an ample indoor play structure, a walking track for seniors, and a fieldhouse that can accommodate a large variety of sports all year-round, local families will have more options at their fingertips.
So after such a long and accomplished run as councillor, one can’t help but wonder: why another four years?
The answer, according to Funk, is simple. He still hasn’t accomplished everything he set out to do. The Community Resource Centre promises to be the culmination of three decades of work, and he wants to see it through.
“I think we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “We hope to hear a funding announcement [from the federal government] around November or December.”
Other major endeavours he’d like to see through include the further development of the business park, which is picking up steam, and the recent boom in the town’s commercial sector. In addition to the commercial strip west of town, Funk sees potential along Highway 311 on the east side of the community. He also looks forward to seeing the report that council recently commissioned to study the implications of private police force.
A Project Manager
Not everything that goes on behind the scenes gets people excited, he says. For example, at election time the public doesn’t always want to hear about basic infrastructure projects like street repair, water and sewer line improvements, and work on the lagoon. People take such things for granted. But basic infrastructure is a necessary preoccupation for members of council.
“I’m a builder by nature,” Funk says of the qualities that have allowed him to make an impact. “When we did the expansion of the town office [in the early 1990s], I was project manager on that. If you tender the whole thing out, it’s going to cost you anywhere from 10 to 20 percent more. So those are savings that I could give to the town.”
As project manager, he also oversaw upgrades in the mid-90s that allowed the Public Works building to be converted into a home for the burgeoning fire department. Before this, the fire department had been housed in a little shop behind the Chicken Chef. Funk took the lead in selling that shop and using the proceeds of the sale to add two large fire truck bays to the Public Works building, without involving any tax dollars.
Funk also project managed the construction of the picnic shelter in Hespeler Park, resulting in cost savings.
Another interesting case is the building located at 329 Bronstone Drive that has most recently been occupied by Horizon Livestock and Poultry Supply. The building was built by the town 15 years ago, intended to be leased by an internet pharmacy. When that business ran into trouble and closed after six months, despite having signed a five-year lease, the town ended up turning a profit of $100,000, due in large part to Funk’s cost-saving measures during construction.
Institutional Memory
A benefit of having long-serving councillors is that they have long memories. Councils change and mayors come and go, so it can be valuable to know what came before. In government terms, this is called institutional memory.
That’s something Funk brings to the table, as over the years he has served with five different mayors—Gil Wiebe, Clarence Braun, Gord Daman, Greg Fehr, and Myron Dyck—and well over a dozen fellow councillors.
He says that every mayoral administration has had a very different dynamic.
“When Clarence Braun took over from Gil Wiebe, he was a visionary,” says Funk. “He wanted to see things happen. When Gord Daman came on board, he was ‘get it done’ [with] infrastructure, like the Heritage Centre and those type of things. Greg Fehr was very much into all the details.”
For the last few years, Funk has come to admire Mayor Myron Dyck, who he describes as a people person.
