The Westlock Child Care Society has potentially been given a stay of execution after running into financial trouble.
The society appeared at the Sept. 19 joint services committee meeting between the Town of Westlock, Westlock County and Village of Clyde to ask for $200,000 to help keep it afloat.
That request was denied, but the committee met again on Sept. 26, along with the society’s creditor, Servus Credit Union, to try and figure out a way to save Westlock’s daycare spaces.
Town mayor Bruce Lennon said the purpose of that meeting was to try to find a stopgap to keep the society operating for another three to four months until a permanent solution can be figured out.
In the end, the committee came up with a recommendation that it presented to Servus and will present to its member councils.
“The recommendation was that we would provide a grant to the society for $5,000 a month for the next four months to help reduce their debt,” Lennon said.
Since the committee can only make recommendations, it remains to be seen whether the society will receive the $20,000 the committee recommended — the town, county and village still need to approve the grant.
In addition, Lennon said Servus has to approve the proposal as well.
Society executive director Roxanne Gilmar explained the society had got itself into its dire financial straits as a result of delayed collection of outstanding accounts and a loss of $37,000 in provincial government funding.
In order to start fixing the situation, she said the society has started aggressively collecting its outstanding accounts.
Clients whose accounts were more than 30 days in arrears had until Sept. 30 to settle up, or else those accounts would be taken to either small-claims court or sent to a collections agency.
She also said parents sending their kids to the centre will be seeing two fee increases over the next year.
A 20-per-cent increase is slated for Nov. 1, with a second 20-per-cent increase scheduled for May 1, 2014. “This will bring us up to some of the levels of the other centres,” Gilmar said, referring to childcare facilities in neighbouring municipalities.
“We have probably been the lowest fee-structured day care.”
Another change coming down the pipe is that starting Nov. 1, clients will be required to pay for their childcare spaces at the beginning of the month, rather than at the end, Gilmar said.
“Then, I think we will be afloat again and continuing on to provide quality child care to the people of this community,” she said.
For Lennon, having the society operational is important because it provides an “essential and very important” service to the entire Westlock region.
“Everyone agrees this is a heck of a service,” he said. “I think 200-plus kids are looked after either through the day home process or directly at the centre.”
