A new child-care centre in Ecole Qayqayt Elementary is getting $40,000 from the City of New Westminster.
Council has approved $40,000 from the city’s child-care amenity capital reserve fund to the Lower Mainland Purpose Society. The funds will be used to furnish and equip the child-care facility that’s part of the Neighbourhood Learning Centre in the school and will provide 36 licensed spaces.
According to a staff report, the Ministry of Education invested $546,543 in the new child-care centre, but the Neighbourhoods of Learning funding didn’t cover furnishings and equipment. The school district leased the space to the Purpose Society to operate a child-care facility.
A staff report states that the society had estimated the cost of furnishing and equipping the facility to be $188,213 plus tax. The costs of furnishing the space are “larger than anticipated” and the society didn’t get some anticipated funding from the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
The staff report said the child-care amenity provision capital reserve fund has about $73,000 so it will have about $33,000 left after providing funds to the Purpose Society.
TransLink rejects route request
TransLink has rejected a request to reroute the 410 bus in Queensborough.
The city wrote to TransLink and forwarded it a petition signed by residents seeking a change to the 410 bus to better serve the Sukh Sagar Temple and Queen Elizabeth Community School. TransLink assessed the situation and determined it wasn’t physically able to reroute the bus to Wood Street without undertaking significant municipal road work.
“Further, the requested detour to the 410 route, one of the busiest bus routes in the region with over 17,000 daily riders, would impose an unacceptable delay to all of our existing 410 riders,” stated a letter from TransLink to the city. “Bus service through Queensborough is currently provided within walking distance of both the Sukh Sagar Temple and the Queen Elizabeth Elementary School. Each are located within 400 metres of stops serving route 104, which provides a direct connection to 22nd Street SkyTrain station.”
Last summer, the city received a petition signed by more than 60 people asking that the bus be rerouted to travel along Wood Street before returning to its regular route.
No shortage of work for mayor’s task force
The mayor’s task force on transportation will offer input on implementation of the city’s master transportation plan.
The plan, adopted in September 2014, identified four targets and 122 actions to meet the city’s short-, medium- and long-term priorities for transportation. The task force will include the mayor, two councillors, the directors of engineering and development services, the manager of infrastructure planning, the manager of strategic priorities and sustainability, a transportation engineer and a representative from the New Westminster Police Department.
“The mandate of the mayor’s task force is to provide recommendations and strategic advice to city council on regional transportation matters and to establish an implementation plan for the goals and objectives contained in the master transportation plan,” stated a staff report.
