Sechelt Coun. Matt McLean didn’t mince words at a March 17 council meeting. “The funding model for libraries on the Sunshine Coast is broken,” he said, referring to the newly endorsed five-year funding and service agreement for the Sechelt Public Library.
While McLean, who wants to see the system overhauled to create a single library service for the Coast, called it like he saw it, he also praised the agreement as a “big improvement” over the last one. At the very least it gives everyone involved – including the public – the peace of mind that comes from stable, predictable funding and services.
While the library funding system is not perfect, to be sure, there is another service on the Sunshine Coast far more deserving to be called out as broken.
Every year ice user groups plead with the SCRD board to keep ice installed so they can offer spring programming. And every year those requests are subject to the political whims of the day. Various directors have raised expense, fairness to dry floor user groups and equity for taxpayers as rationales for approving springtime ice – or not. The impact of this dysfunctional annual palaver doesn’t stop with frustrated user group volunteers and politicians.
In a small but powerful example, Dan Morrison, a father of three young children, wrote in a letter to the editor this week that to keep costs and time demands in check, he and his spouse took the reasonable steps of keeping their seven-year-old son out of his usual activity, karate, so they could purchase a helmet, a pair of skates and enrol him in spring ice programming at his request.
But as Keili Bartlett reported, on March 18 SCRD directors approved a staff recommendation to extract ice from the Sechelt arena by month’s end. Morrison discovered this by way of a letter from the skating club informing him lessons were cancelled. “Now my kid won’t be skating, and now karate classes are full, so we’ve missed our spot,” wrote Morrison. “I’m more than upset.”
Strong chances are he is not alone in his rancour, this year especially, given the lack of organized activities for children due to the pandemic.
Staff said it would cost more than $52,000 to keep ice installed at one arena for nine extra weeks. Directors balked at the cost and stuck to their guns. It’s a pandemic, after all, and with taxes rising considerably this year, who wants to add even a half percentage point to those figures?
One option would have been to use COVID-19 relief funds to cover those expenses – but the SCRD was given a paltry sum compared with their municipal neighbours.
So instead, the annual dysfunctional cycle continues unabated and seven year olds miss out on skating and martial arts lessons, forced to learn instead how to cope with disappointment.
Meanwhile, as the, albeit imperfect, library funding agreement demonstrates – there could be a better way. It might take considerable effort, and it may be subject to politicians’ ire, but surely stability and predictability would be a big improvement over this.
