Child care expansion considered by Powell River city council

City of Powell River staff have been directed to prepare amendments to two city bylaws to facilitate creation of more child care spaces.

At the June 22 city council meeting, director of planning services Jason Gow said Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) had funded the development of a comprehensive study of current and future child care needs in qathet in 2019.

“This was the region-wide planning report,” said Gow. “It resulted in recommendations for the city such as amendments to the zoning bylaw to facilitate the development of more child care spaces.”

Gow said staff members were seeking council direction to begin this work and specifically, to proceed with draft amendments to the zoning bylaw that aim to eliminate barriers and encourage creation of more child care spaces in the city.

“If we get the direction to begin this work we would return to you with a draft amendment bylaw,” said Gow. “We’ve identified that this is in the [Powell River region-wide child-care-planning project] plan. We would like to pick this up and begin working on these amendments that arguably have some impact on the development of child care spaces.”

Gow said an amendment bylaw would likely include a better description of the differences between home-based child care and purpose-built child-care facilities. He said another likely addition would be permission for child-care facilities to be located in most residential, multi-family, commercial and institutional zones, and removal of the size restrictions on child-care facilities, because caps on the number of children are already set through provincial licensing processes.

Mayor Ron Woznow said in the last seven months he’s had a number of people point out that Powell River is badly in need of additional child-care facilities.

Councillor George Doubt said he’d read through the report prepared by the social planner. He said there were recommendations to create more child care spaces. He said the recommendation included changes to the zoning bylaw and business licensing bylaw, which need to be reviewed to make child care spaces more available.

“Those are things we can do locally and should do to make child care more effective,” said Doubt. He added that the report also mentions discussion of region-wide programs, which suggests partnerships with qathet Regional District, partnerships with School District 47 and possibly partnerships with seniors organizations.

“These are all things that require a plan beyond what council can do by itself,” said Doubt. “We had a social planner to do this before but we don’t right now. I would like to see the bylaw enablement go ahead and I would like to include the business licensing bylaw in the motion.”

Council carried a motion to amend the zoning bylaw and business licensing bylaw to facilitate the creation of more child care spaces.