‘The problem lies with the traffic, not the daycare’

The City of Yellowknife’s rejection of a YWCA NWT application to open a new daycare – for reasons primarily related to traffic – has split opinion.

The city said a daycare at 101 Haener Drive for around 30 children would mean “significant traffic and parking challenges” at an intersection of three roads that it already considers “inherently unsafe.”

YWCA NWT executive director Hawa Dumbuya-Sesay said last week the group was reviewing how to proceed after the city formally refused its application. She said some $90,000 already spent on the project could be lost.

Some Yellowknife residents say the city made the right call. Multiple near neighbours of the proposed daycare voiced concerns directly to the city as it considered the application, and others backed them up online after Cabin Radio’s initial reporting on the decision.

Others see it differently.

Adam Denley, a Yellowknife cycling and transit advocate, wrote to city council on Tuesday questioning the philosophy behind the city’s decision to reject the YWCA’s application.

Denley told councillors the concern about traffic is valid and the double intersection’s “bad design makes it dangerous and inefficient.”

But if the city admits in its own paperwork that the intersection is unsafe, Denley said, denying the application won’t make it any safer.

“If it’s too dangerous for a daycare, surely it’s too dangerous for the residential area as it currently stands,” he wrote.

“So what’s the other option? Fix the intersection, of course … if we know it’s unsafe, aren’t we obliged to make it safe?

“Consider what we’ve done instead. Given the chance to support young families and childcare workers, we are instead bowing reflexively to the demands of motor vehicles.”

Denley concluded: “Let’s recognize that the problem lies with the traffic, not the daycare.

“Thirty-two irascible two-year-olds are not a danger to the community, cars and trucks are. Automobiles are meant to serve our needs, not hold us hostage. We cannot be the people that put their cars first and their children second.”

Situation is ‘a bit mad’

Ben Hendriksen, a city councillor who has advocated for more cycling infrastructure in Yellowknife, said he agreed with every word of the letter he received from Denley.

“One of the things where clearly we still have some work to do, as a city, is to right-size our priorities around people and not vehicles first,” Hendriksen told Cabin Radio.

Also on Tuesday, the CBC reported a city planner had indicated changes to the intersections could address the problems raised but, since no such changes were outlined in the original application, a new one would need to be submitted – suggesting the responsibility of solving the intersection problem would rest with the YWCA in a future application. (The YWCA has said it will carry out a traffic study and then determine its next steps.)

“My understanding is the YWCA will now need to put in a new application, but I’ll be trying from my end – and I’m sure some other councillors might be doing the same,” said Hendriksen when asked if council might intervene.

“What is the issue? Is it traffic that’s stopping this? Because that’s kind-of madness if we’re limiting a very needed service in our city, from a provider who has the capacity and interest in providing that service, because of traffic and safety concerns around vehicles. That’s a bit mad.”

Mayor Rebecca Alty told Cabin Radio by email that she would not comment on the application until after Tuesday, which she said marked the closing of the window for any appeal over the decision to refuse it.

Councillor Steve Payne, reached by email, said the situation was “a tough one” and he, too, would reserve his comments until the matter came up for discussion at council level.

“We need new daycare spots in town,” Payne wrote. “But is this the best place for it?”

‘They should have expected this to fail’

Adrian Bell, a realtor and former councillor, said 101 Haener Drive is emphatically not the best place for a daycare.

“To argue that a daycare or any other application should be approved regardless of location is folly in my world. There are dozens of properties [in Niven] that change hands every year and you would be hard pressed to find one of them that is a worse daycare location than this one,” Bell wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday.

“The YWCA had and continues to have many other options. The neighbours would have been completely supportive in a better location, because they are desperate for more childcare spaces nearby.

“I get that the YWCA was likely pursuing the simplest solution first – they already had this property in their inventory – but they should have expected this to fail. And not because of neighbourhood opinions – because of very real traffic and safety issues.”

Bell, saying he had recently sold multiple properties that would have been good daycare locations, urged the YWCA to “call me and I promise you we can solve Yellowknife’s childcare shortage in record time.”

Hendriksen said the argument that the YWCA could try another location was “a fair perspective” but might overlook the reality of the organization’s situation.

“This is clearly a property that they’re trying to utilize so I can understand that from their perspective, whether or not there are better buildings in town,” he said.

“I’m sure if the YWCA was able to afford to just snap up another building, they would, but this is a property that is already in their ownership, so I can understand why they’re trying to utilize it.”