By Courtney Battistone
Libraries, hospitals and the Plant Pool asked for more funding at the transition board’s first public budget consultation Oct. 30.
The first of the four meetings was the only one held in Centretown at regional headquarters.
The Ottawa Public Library, the Plant Pool Recreation Association and representatives of various Ottawa hospitals say they need more money to operate in an amalgamated Ottawa.
Three of the 10 presentations were specifically about current library funding.
Tannis Yankewicz, chair of the library board, emphasized the need for money in Ottawa’s public libraries.
“Following five years of continuous budget restraint and reduction, our library has reached a point of chronic underfunding,” she said.
“The new Ottawa public library system will be Canada’s largest bilingual public library. It means that we supply significant quantities of material in both languages, which of course adds to the cost of doing business.”
Marjorie Leach, another supporter, said libraries allow low-income families an opportunity to become more educated. She also mentioned the need to build a new library to service the city’s south end.
Representatives of various Ottawa hospitals, including Queensway-Carleton and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, said they need $230 million to help pay for costs such as caring for an aging population. But they don’t expect all of that money to come from the city.
The Plant Pool Recreation Association also requested funds to rebuild the old Plant Bath pool at the corner of Somerset and Preston streets that was closed in 1996.
“My kids are now too old to learn to swim in this pool,” Sally Rutherford of the Plant Pool association said. “They already swim somewhere else, because they have to, but it means we have to drive them. There are lots of kids in our neighbourhood who have nobody to drive them and so they’re losing that opportunity.”
Though money for the Plant Pool is included in Ottawa’s current budget, the association is worried it could be lost in the shuffle and the money won’t be included in the next budget.
The transition board will release its draft budget Dec. 1., with final approval coming in the new year.