Dozens of people who believe the heart of Penticton is its community centre rallied on City Hall Monday, using Valentine’s Day as a backdrop to show their love for the facility.
The City of Penticton is considering having the public facility run by a private company once renovations are complete this summer, having put out a request for proposals to the community at large.
Those at Monday’s rally through downtown Penticton say City Councilors should have a heart and keep public services public.
“It’s Valentine’s Day and we want to deliver a Valentine’s message to Mayor and Council,” said Zoe Magnus, rally organizer. “We want them to have a heart and keep the heart in the publicly operated community centre.”
The rally began at Gyro Park included members of the public and the union that represents community centre workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and continued into Penticton City council chambers where a budget meeting was being held.
“We’ve seen what happened with the Events Centre, we’ve seen the impacted that that’s had on people like our local hockey players,” said Magnus. “We want to keep this affordable; we want to keep it accessible. We want the high quality programs we’ve always had here to continue to run.”
Penticton mayor Dan Ashton says the city only put out the request for proposal to keep its options open as it bargains a collective agreement with CUPE.
Ashton says he would prefer to keep the centre public and bring back all laid-off employees, but wants the union to agree to have any new employees start at much lower wages.
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