It's disappointing to see six community centre associations continue to opppose universal access for all residents at our community centres.
The OneCard is a long-overdue program to let people use any community centre they want, regardless of where they live, just like our public libraries.
Community centre associations are still fully able to sign-up people as members, and fundraise to support local programming. This has not changed. What we want to change is taxpayers being forced to pay a separate membership each time they go to a different community centre. Your tax dollars pay for all of the facilities: the community centres, the rinks, the pools — and you should be entitled to use them when you want without paying extra fees.
The public have clearly responded to this with over 40,000 obtaining a OneCard within eight weeks of it being available for rinks, pools and Park Board fitness centres. Sixteen of 22 CCAs across Vancouver support the interim agreement to implement a One-Card in community centres on Sept 1.
It’s a simple, fair system that gives universal access to all our recreation facilities while letting CCAs determine their local programming. I encourage all residents of Vancouver to get the facts on the OneCard at www.vancouver.ca/onecard.
(Ths letter has been updated since originally posted due to a copying/pasting error that omitted the first five words.)
