BELWOOD – Centre Wellington’s mayor wants township staff to look at adding a childcare and/or recreational space for Belwood to support the town as it grows.
A notice of motion from Mayor Shawn Watters put forward at Monday’s Centre Wellington council meeting, up for discussion at a meeting at the end of the month, directs staff to “investigate and work towards supporting the development of a childcare facility/recreational space to be located in Belwood.”
In a phone interview on Tuesday, the mayor said this is in response to the community growing in size from 30,000 residents to 60,000 over the coming decades which will require more facilities like these.
“Traditionally, our infrastructure has been located in, I’ll call it the more urban areas and here’s an opportunity possibly for something to be located in Belwood and something that helps the rural community,” Watters said, adding proposed subdivisions in rural Belwood are informing this motion to a degree as well. “In the 31 years that I’ve been living in Centre Wellington, we haven’t had a lot of things built in Belwood.”
This will likely require some financial help from other levels of government, something the mayor alluded to at the grand re-opening of the Jefferson Elora Community Centre when he declared the township needed more spaces like that one.
“We had the other levels of government there, ‘thanks for helping out on this but we’re just replacing something we already had and we’re going to have to come back for, hopefully, additional help on our next facility,’” Watters said.
“One level of government can’t do all these things by themselves, especially when we’re in a growth scenario.”
Whether this facility is ultimately indoors or outdoors and where to put it is part of what the mayor is looking for staff to discover through investigation and collaboration with a Belwood advisory committee.
“The idea here is to explore, it’s a start, there’s a lot of baby steps, it doesn't mean that this is going to happen,” Watters said.
The motion will be discussed at the Jan. 29 council meeting where the mayor said he hopes for good dialogue with the rest of council.
The full notice of motion reads:
That the Council of the Township of Centre Wellington direct staff to investigate and work towards supporting the development of a child-care facility /recreational space to be located in Belwood. This includes the collaboration and coordination between other levels of government and community partners;
AND THAT the investigation will include the identification of a site, planning issues, construction logistics, financial implication, and facility management. A public process including input from the Belwood advisory committee would also form part of this planning process;
AND THAT staff be instructed to bring back a report to Council at the June 24th meeting, providing background information and details to facilitate the next phase of this potential development.
