CitySSM

The City will continue to provide municipal day care services but it took another lengthy emotional debate that lasted another 3-hours last night—-this follows a 3-hour debate two weeks ago when the matter was deferred.  Council in a 6 to 6 vote defeated a staff recommendation to transition out of providing the up to 100 licenced spaces which includes 51 subsidized spaces.  Council in a followup vote, accepted a resolution put forward by councillor Marci Bruni a co-chair of the Day Care Review Committee, to have city staff report back to council on the viability and feasibility of option 5 which would involve operating municipal day cares in schools which would result in the closure of the Maycourt and Jessie Irving Day Care Centres.  Councillors speaking in favour of the staff recommendation argued that by ending the municipal services you would free up 855-thousand dollars of public money that could create even more spaces.  Bruni had this to say…

Ward 4 councillor Rick Niro also served on the Day Care Review Committee as a co-chair and he weighed the strong arguments put forward by those in support of the staff recommendation in making his decision…

However Niro ended up voting against the recommendation and also threw his support behind Bruni’s  followup resolution to have city staff report back to council on the viability and feasibility of option 5.  Mayor Christian Provenzano says council wasn’t in a position to go ahead with option 5 at this point as Bruni had orginally wanted…

A staff report indicates that by operating municipal day cares out of schools there would be an estimated operational savings of 150 to 175-thousand dollars.  It was also suggested that going with option 5 would mean a loss of three positions out of the 30 staff members—-a loss of one supervisor, an early childhood educator and a part-time cook.