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Petition launched to save MY Place daycare

With daycare capacity elsewhere, society looking at meeting needs of arts and culture sector

Parents who use the soon-to-be-closed Teddy Bear Daycare have launched a petition to keep the centre in Millennium Place open.

“We believe closing a publicly funded daycare is wrong,” said Jennifer Abbott, who started the petition, which already has over 300 signatures.

“We have been circulating it. Every single parent at Teddy Bear Daycare has a copy, and the staff has a copy. We are going door to door in neighbourhoods, we are going to all the businesses, we are going to all the business owners.

“So we are doing a lot of old fashioned stomping to get out there and get people to sign it.

“I have found wholeheartedly that most people are genuinely shocked that a daycare is being closed.”

The board of Millennium Place has been wrestling with the future of the Teddy Bear Daycare space for many months.

When the daycare opened in 2001 it was to meet a perceived need in the community for after-hours, weekend and tourist drop-in childcare. But over time the number of parents needing these services has dropped off. It has been closed Sundays for months and it is likely it will close on Saturdays soon.

“ …The landscape has changed and Millennium Place is not necessarily about ownership of programs but about looking around the community and figuring out where the greatest need is and to apply our resources toward that need,” said Dennis Marriott, Millennium Place’s general manager, adding that the daycare is slated to close June 30.

“Yes, there is definitely recognition that children are the most precious resource we have in Whistler, but there is also the recognition that there is not a lot of space in Whistler and arts and culture in particular is suffering.

“What I hope the community realizes eventually is that our intent is very honourable. We are trying to operate our society responsibly, we are trying to figure out what we can do best and do it, we are trying to say we can’t do (daycare) best and there are other people who can, so is there a way that we can partner with them to make this happen.”

The Maurice Young Millennium Place Society, a registered charity, was incorporated to run the facility in 2000.

The Whistler Interfaith Society currently owns the building. However, it’s likely that by June the facility will be owned by the Resort Municipality of Whistler, which took over the mortgage in 2005 and agreed to ownership in 2007.

Whether municipal ownership will affect the mandate of the MYMP Society is yet to be determined. However, the MYMP Society is anticipating significant cuts in municipal funding this year.

Since Teddy Bear Daycare opened the Whistler Children’s Centre has also opened a second location at Spring Creek, and more recently daycare has become available in Pemberton.

Abbott, of the Blackcomb Lodge, said both she and her husband, Scott Holmes, the chef at the Longhorn, chose Teddy Bear for daughter Ries, now three years old, because they could drop her off on the way to work.

“I can walk (my daughter) to school everyday, which I think is just such a phenomenal experience,” said Abbott.

While she now rarely uses the weekend hours she believes the service needs to stay in place if Whistler is to retain and attract families who work in the service sector.

“One of the fundamental issues is that as a ski resort trying to move toward sustainability, as outlined in the Whistler 2020 study that was done, it is increasingly getting ever more difficult for long-term employees to be retained. And how are you going to recruit and keep families if you don’t have the facilities to support them?” said Abbott.

The Spring Creek location of the Whistler Children’s Centre is not a good replacement option added Abbott, since most parents don’t want to drive even further than they already do and in the winter it is one of the most challenging stretches of road to commute.

The board of MYMP Society has agreed to meet with concerned parents on April 10.

Teddy Bear Daycare has already been removed from the list of on-going programs on the Millennium Place website.

Marriott said the society must act responsibly in running the facility and that currently Teddy Bear Daycare is costing about $30,000 to $50,000 more than it is bringing in.

Both the Whistler Arts Council and the Whistler Museum and Archives are looking at the soon-to-be vacated daycare facility in Millennium Place as a temporary home.

The Arts Council must leave its current log-house home later this year as it sits on Lot 1/9, which is slated for development for the 2010 Winter Games celebration plaza.

And the museum is considering whether the Millennium Place space would be a good home for the “Journey to 2010” exhibit they hope to put together for Games time.

“I think, personally it would be an awesome space for the arts council office,” said arts council executive director Doti Niedermayer.

“We have identified that we would love to move in there even in the short term because the long term use of that space might be for something different, whether that is an art gallery or a different kind of configuration.”

The museum board met late last week and the availability of the space did come up for discussion said Alex Kleinman, president of the board of trustees of the museum.

“What we agreed to was to be represented at the table to hear what is being talked about on the issue,” he said.

The museum is currently planning a move into the old library location. The municipality has allotted $150,000 for the upgrade to the trailers and building to help make it more presentable. There is also $100,000 in the municipal budget for the move and to help prepare for the 2010 exhibit. The museum, like many other municipal grant-in-aid recipients, will get about 30 per cent less funding this year due to cut backs, making its operational funding about $55,000.

Kleinman said part of the on-going discussions is keeping a clear view of the museum’s task in the coming days, which can be seen in terms of both a long-term and a short-term mandate.

In the short term it is to show the world coming in the lead up to the 2010 Games, and during the event how Whistler got to the position it is in today.

But it needs to be done in a professional way, said Kleinman.

“The museum is very focused on the whole arts, culture, heritage community’s needs and what we need to put in place,” he said.

“It is our view that we have a strong commitment to try to present our community well to the visiting world and we need to be careful, so if it can’t be quality then we need to consider meeting our heritage commitments through back-of-house by providing photo and historical information to press and others looking for that information.”

In the long term the museum needs to find a permanent home — an expensive project.

Marriott said no firm decision has been made yet on what might occupy the 1,500 square foot space, but it’s likely the occupant will have a strong tie to arts and culture.

“The winning proposition at the moment is something that is arts and culture focused,” he said.

That may mean using the space for a public art gallery along with some arts and culture administration space, or it might be utilized by groups working to enhance the cultural experience for residents and visitors to the resort.

Marriott said the space is being looked at in the short-term and the long-term as the mandate of My Place is to provide a service that is needed by the community.

For that reason it may have one use leading up to 2010, another at Games time, and transition again after the Olympic and Paralympic Games are over.

What won’t change is the commitment to make sure the use fits with the growing “cultural core” that is being developed using the proximity of the soon-to-be-open Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Centre, the new library, the celebration plaza area at Lot 1/9 and Millennium Place.

“It is actually becoming real, the idea of a cultural core and that there is something to touch and feel in Whistler,” said Marriott.

“I think in the long term — post 2010 — it will be very important for Whistler to have a very strong cultural focus and I am hoping that the Games are the leverage we need to make that happen so we can get to that dream of having a somewhat diversified economy…. We will have the wellness community, the cultural community and sport, so there are lots of reasons to not only come to Whistler, but to stay longer.”

The Whistler Children’s Centre has been taking part in some of the discussions around the closure of Teddy Bear, said executive director Julia Black.

WCC has looked at their capacity and all the Teddy Bear kids could be accommodated at the Nesters location at the end of June, when most of the current Kindergarten kids take-off.

And, said Black, the WCC is looking at the hours of operation to see if it is feasible to extend them and perhaps even offer a multi-age program on Saturdays.

“We are not inflexible but we have to be responsible, especially with the funding that we receive from various parties,” said Black.

Last year the WCC decided to close a half hour earlier, which saved it $7,000 annually, because hardly any parents needed the extra time for pick-up.