A church in Hanover has been given municipal approval to run a private school.
Peace River Gospel Church, located southeast of Mitchell needed conditional use approval in order to establish the school on their property. The church is located along Road 35 North, north of Homestead Crescent.
Herbert Unrau appeared before Hanover Council Wednesday morning. Unrau told Council that they want to run the school within their existing church building. An expansion of the building or construction of a new building is something they may consider in the future.
Unrau says they want to teach their children Godly values, noting they would expect between 25 and 35 students to attend. He adds they have received provincial approval to run as a Kindergarten to grade 12 school but envisions they would probably start with only six grades. According to Unrau, there would not be a bus service offered, and parents would be expected to drop their kids off.
Amos Wiebe is Permit Administrator for the RM of Hanover. He says church-based private schools already exist in the municipality and have done so for many years. Wiebe says these private schools have not posed any major issues to their neighbourhoods or the municipality. Wiebe adds Hanover Administration does not have any concerns with this proposal and suggested Council could approve this application without conditions.
Prior to Wednesday's public hearing, the municipality had not received any correspondence from the public on this proposal. Unrau also told Council that his church has heard no feedback from neighbours.
Two neighbours voiced concern on Wednesday, but not with the school itself. The concerns had to do with the state of Road 35 North. Local residents say that road already takes a beating and is sometimes closed in spring because of mud pushing through. There was a request to Council to at the very least double the amount of dust control that is applied each year. There was also a concern with drainage in that area.
Following the public hearing, Council was unanimous in approving the request. Reeve Jim Funk says the concerns related to poor road conditions and drainage do not necessarily pertain to the application itself.
"Public Works maybe just needs to be more diligent in trying to deal with those issues," says Funk.
The Reeve says there is no commitment from Council to improve road maintenance or upgrade that road anytime soon.
"No, we have a five-year capital that we work on, and we have 500+ miles that we deal with, and we try and do one or two miles a year," explains Funk. "This road at this point is just not on that list."
Funk says that does not mean that Road 35 North cannot be on that list within the next 10 years. He notes there is a lot of traffic along that stretch of roadway, and it would certainly meet the criteria for being rebuilt.
According to Funk, the stretch of road past the church receives dust control twice annually. He adds their Public Works department could certainly assess the situation to determine whether or not additional dust control could be considered. Funk says this may also be something that becomes the responsibility of the church.