Thursday, December 09, 2010

BRING back the PARK CARETAKERS

Oldtown News
Vancouver, BC


BRING back the PARK CARETAKERS


Park Board is planning cuts to public park washrooms. Please speak at Park Board this Monday December 13 at 7 pm.

To get on the speakers list you must call the Board Secretary by noon on Monday. The number for the Board Secretary is 604-257-8451.

It is time that we demanded park board caretakers be brought back to the empty field-houses.

40 caretaker positions were chopped a number of years back with Park board citing savings.

Instead Park board hired flying squads to clean the washrooms whereas the caretakers easily did the work at a much lower cost.

Isn't it ironic now that Park board wants to cut the cleaning of our park washrooms being done by the flying squads which replaced the caretakers.

Caretakers in our parks do a great service for little cost to the public. They ensure our parks are clean and safe for the children.

They live rent free and the Park board pays for the heat and electricity of the field-houses which they would in any case.

Many of the caretakers received a small stipend of about $400.00 a month which is considerably lower than the unionized wages that the flying squad receive.

It makes no sense that the Park board cut the caretakers in the first place so lets demand that our Caretakers be brought back!

Jamie Lee Hamilton
tricia_foxx@yahoo.com