KCCS President’s Report Summer 2019

Welcome to the Kerrisdale Community Centre’s Summer Season. The summer brochure features our our children’s and youth day camps. These camps are popular and always full. We are happy to report the Kerrisdale has again received Federal Government support to hire one day camp manager and nine day camp leaders. While camp activities vary by age group, this grant helps us provide a wide variety programming activities for both children and youth while keeping participation costs down.

Play Palace at the Kerrisdale Arena opened in early April and will again provide indoor fun through August 2019. On April 17th, the Society sponsored a free play session for those patrons and members of the public under the age of 12. With 150 children attending it was a great kick-off for this very popular activity.

The Play Palace is not the only summer activity available for children in Kerrisdale. The very popular Maple Grove pool opens on June 15, 2019 and runs through Labour Day. The pool offers food service (café) and is wheel chair accessible. The Society invites you to three summer events 1) a Canada Day party on Monday July 1; 2) Maple Grove Day on July 27th (2 – 5 pm); 3) Music in the Park, every Friday evening (weather permitting) in July (6:30 – 7:30 pm) featuring local musicians. All of these free events are sponsored by the Society and open to all ages.

The staff and volunteers at the Seniors’ Centre kitchen continue to provide the popular Seniors’ lunches. For those who are not familiar with our Seniors’ Lunch Program, more than 27,000 Society-subsidized lunches were served at our Senior Centre in 2018. On average about 100 meals are served each day, six days a week. This program is a valuable resource to our Kerrisdale seniors. While the Society will continue to provide an on-going subsidy ($59,000 in 2018) to maintain affordability for seniors, increasing food costs have forced the Society to increase the price of lunches for the first time since 2015. These price increases will be effective June 1.

The Program Committee, in cooperation with our programmers, has been busy since last fall. More than 25 new, and successful, programs were started during the fall, 2018 and winter, 2019 seasons. These achievements are the work of the centre Programmers and the Society’s Program Committee. As a result of these efforts Kerrisdale Community Centre offers more program options that any other community centre in the City.

The 2-week spring break camp was full (30 children each week). During the second week, we were able to accommodate three children under a Vancouver School Board program that supports families identified as in need.

The Society, under the leadership of the Community Engagement Committee (CEC) has initiated an earthquake emergency preparedness program. KEEP (Kerrisdale Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness), newly formed in January 2019, is a volunteer-run community group working to increase Kerrisdale community’s capacity to build collaborative readiness to address earthquakes and other urgent situations of vulnerability. As a community partner of KEEP, KCCS has been providing free space and human resources (CEC and KCC staff assistance) for monthly training sessions held at KCC. Since Feb 2019, there have been 3 sessions: Table Top Exercise, Map Your Neighbourhood, and Individual & Family Preparedness, with attendance ranging from 7 ~ 25. Everyone is invited to attend these workshops, become part of the KEEP leadership team, and help you family and neighbours to be better prepared when the big one comes.

The floor of the gymnasium was refinished during spring break. Constant and heavy use of the gym requires that the floor be redone every year and we thank Park Board for undertaking this preventive maintenance work. To the joy of Pickle Ball players and other gym users we also completed a full renewal of the overhead lighting in the gym.

It has been well over 10 years since the exterior of the community centre has been painted. A renewal is coming! The community centre is slated for exterior painting in 2020. Exterior cleaning and a fresh coat of paint will do wonders. Prior to that, a trial painting of one wall on the east end of the Auditorium (adjacent to West Boulevard) is planned to test new colour combinations.

A refreshed garden area, crushed rock filing, and new, higher-capacity bicycle stands have also been installed at the east entry (main entry) to the community centre. Two benches and a table have been ordered for this space. We expect these features to be installed in the fall, 2019. Once the benches and tables have been installed we hope the area will be used for socializing and perhaps some programming.

The fitness rooms (stretch room, weight room, and the machine room containing tread mills, ellipticals, bicycles, and weight machines) is one of the most popular areas in the community centre. More than 250 people use this facility every day. With such heavy use an ongoing effort is needed to keep equipment in good working order, and to renew equipment when it wears out. To this end, the Society invests $35-40,000 each year in maintenance and renewal of our fitness equipment.

Thank you for making this community centre one of the best in Vancouver. Have a great summer.

Robert Lockhart,
President