Council Votes To Mediate Dispute Between Neighbourhood And Daycare
Despite on-going concerns over parking dating back to as early as 2016 Council voted unanimously to allow a daycare to expand its operations while at the same time the City will try to negotiate a solution between the business and the neighbourhood.
At their October 20th meeting Council unanimously approved a discretionary use application to allow a daycare to expand its physical operations into an adjacent apartment building located at 1089 7th Avenue NW with the City to help mediate concerns with the neighbourhood.
According to the application by Northwest Child Development Centre the application to convert an apartment building into a daycare is “our centre is maxxed out with a huge waiting list. Our community is in need of more childcare spaces especially when the Universal Childcare system takes effect…”
It is an application that pits neighbours in a zoned residential neighbourhood against the perceived needs of the city as a whole.
The existing daycare on Hall Street West - MJ Independent photo
“I’m already negatively impacted by the size of that business because they block our driveway especially in the wintertime,” neighbourhood resident Monique Lafontaine told Council.
Lafontaine appeared before Council to ask them to not approve the discretionary use permit due to the negative impact she feels the existing daycare has had on her home and the neighbourhood as well.
“For us the idea that they are going to expand their location and had an additional 30 parents drop off and picking up it means we cannot enjoy our property,” Lafontaine said about the problem of her driveway being continually blocked by daycare clients.
She also questioned what the daycare will do once they outgrow the two locations if the discretionary use application was approved.
“They are already saying the daycare has outgrown their current building and they are requiring additional space but what happens when they outgrow that second space and you (Council) have already turned it into a commercial use?”
“We already have a problem where this daycare is growing to the point where it is no longer neighbourhood scale.”
She used the analogy of the present daycare being a bed and breakfast and if it was at capacity would Council allow it to expand into being a hotel in a residential neighbourhood.
“They (the present daycare) is beyond the neighbourhood scope. We have got a lot of traffic and congestion and noise pollution already during their peak times on our street and just letting them expand in this way is going to increase that,” Lafontaine said, adding “this makes it a safety concern as well as degrading our ability to use our property and to enjoy it fully. If I can’t get out to go to work because someone has blocked my driveway that is not fair to me.”
It needs to be noted the neighbourhood has problems with student and staff from the nearby Sask Polytechnic where parking is not free and as such their vehicles flood into the adjacent streets near the daycare.
She said initially when the former YMCA moved out of the building the daycare now occupies the neighbourhood was happy but that soon soured as bylaws allowed converting the 7th Avenue parking into a play area and the entrance was moved to Hall Street West.
“That is why they have a loading zone now but it is not sufficient. So that is where our concern is because we are already being negatively impacted. I think this discretionary use will cause us to only be more negatively impacted.”
“It is a rather scary thought you cannot use your home in a way everyone else in your neighbourhood can simply because a business across the street is thriving. It is great for them but it is negative for us.”
Acting Mayor Dawn Luhning asked Lafontaine about when her driveway was being blocked - was it all of the time or was it on an intermittent basis?
Lafontaine said was intermittent “especially in the wintertime and the way snow gets cleared it reduces even more parking spaces and there isn’t enough room for someone to park next to our driveway on the street…then their end pokes out into our driveway…its not safe to leave our driveway where you might hit somebody (due to snow and ice).”
The snow on Hall Street West is not hauled away but simply piled in a windrow alongside of the street.
Crystal Kober-McCubbing executive director at the Northwest Child Development Centre the intent of expanding into the building south of their existing facility was not to increase the numbers of children attending the daycare despite what he discretionary use application said.
“Our biggest game plan isn’t to increase the number of kids that are coming because of the COVID we are trying to keep our classrooms in coharts so we don’t combine the kids. The idea was to have the other building to just move the…school ages and kindergartens into a different building so we are not cross contaminating back and forth,” Kober-McCubbing told Council.
“I am not going to have any more staff than I have now and the kids are just going to move from one building to the next is the biggest game plan of it all. Because with COVID we are just before we use to be able to combine classrooms and then we could have less staff. And now because we can’t do that it just makes more sense to not have everybody in one place,” she said.
There are no plans to adjoin the buildings physically.
Councillor Heather Eby asked about the Discretionary Use Application because it appeared as the application was to expand the number of children the daycare could accept.
“So kindergarten would stay exactly the same and there would be no increase. School age (children) we would increase by four I think is the exact total,” Kober-McCubbing said.
Councillor Doug Blanc asked where the children would enter the property being considered under the Discretionary Use Application.
“We intended them to enter through the back door as that currently we have a designated stall for parents to park there now to come into the building. With the acquisition of the new building there is another stall. So they would have two stalls side by side and they would come on through the backdoor and that is where the boot rooms are going to be located,” Kober-McCubbing said.
It needs to be noted what is known as the “back lane or back alley” throughout the majority of the Avenues are not legal laneways and privately owned. It was a major reason used by Administration to move garbage collection to front lane pickup as the City did not own the back lane where garbage collection had traditionally occurred.
Asked if they anticipated parents parking along Hall Street to access the new facility she said that she could not answer it 100 percent “but I can tell you the only school age or parents that park on Hall Street now is if they have another child that go to the daycare now. So they would park there and walk down the side. In the new building they have to physically leave the building to get into the new building.”
Director Planning Michelle Sanson said if the daycare expansion was approved and later they decided to move from the building where the discretionary use existed it would be grandfathered if it was used as a daycare. Other commercial uses are not allowed and once it was no longer used for that purpose it would revert to a Residential property under zoning regulations.
Asked by Acting Mayor Dawn Luhning if Administration had been familiar about complaints on the current daycare Sasnson said they had not.
“We haven’t heard of any complaints on the current property like the north property to date,” Sanson said.
“I am just wondering if there isn’t some kind of communication bridge we need to, like there has got to be some way to fix this for the residents. I mean it is a busy corner. It has been a busy corner for years and I don’t know what the answer is but I don’t feel comfortable letting it go on in the shambles that maybe it is. I am not saying it is horrible but it is when you are living there and it is your home,” Acting Mayor Luhning said.
“How do we make this work for everybody? Is there some kind of maybe I am asking you is there some kind of resolution to this for everybody?”
Sanson said from the City’s perspective this was not an expansion of an existing business as the application was for a separate building on a separate title.
“From our perspective we look at it as a separate use on that property alone. And from that we look at it as 30 children in that new building and requiring four parking spaces,” Sanson said.
Acting Mayor Luhning asked if there are the required four parking spaces on the new facility could the parking problems become better.
“I am guessing what I am asking can we say ‘you can’t drop of here but you need to drop off here because of the neighbourhood’?” she asked.
Sanson replied she was unsure how the City could police where people picking up and dropping off their children should park.
“They are providing the parking, we can’t force people to use that parking,” Sanson replied.
“It doesn’t matter to me if it is two seconds or two minutes if you are blocking the driveway you are in the wring. And so those kinds of things what do we like how do we make these things work in these types of areas where there are residences and businesses?” the Acting Mayor asked, adding “you can’t have that where people are blocking driveways, you can’t.”
City manager Jim Puffalt felt the issue was one where the opportunity was there for the neighbour to meet with the proponent to see if a resolution could be amicably worked out.
“I that because it is a daycare and you know your clients coming in you may have a little bit more control or guidance for your clients as to where they park. If it is causing issues for you to your neighbourhood that might be a way to resolve that. To say to your clients please this is the area where the drop off is and you are bothering my neighbours,” Puffalt said.
He went on to ask about signage informing people where they can park.
“There maybe something where we can help along the process between the neighbourhood but as Ms Sanson is saying it is meeting the zoning requirements,” Puffalt said.
“I understand the need for a daycare and how important it is but on the other hand I wouldn’t want to live with someone blocking my driveway and cars idling throughout the wintertime. I think that is unreasonable and there may be a way to try to work together to resolve this.”
Acting Mayor Luhning said it may not be the City’s responsibility but if there was some way to coordinate a resolution between the neighbourhood and the business.
“I just think that is what needs to happen,” she said.
In a unanimous 6 - 0 vote Council approved the discretionary use application.