Tantramar council will vote on the fate of Dorchester’s DCS Kids Daycare at its next regular meeting on May 14. The daycare is seeking a zoning change and approval of a lease renewal, in order to keep operating at its location at the Dorchester Recreation Centre on School Street.
DCS Kids Daycare’s current lease for space at the Dorchester Recreation Centre on School Street expires at the end of June.
Active Living Director Matt Pryde told Tantramar council on Monday that the daycare’s tenancy has been “going really well”. The new three year lease would remain the same as the current one, with DCS Kids Daycare paying $750 per month in rent to the municipality, and covering things like liability insurance and provincial regulatory approval. The town will remain responsible for snow clearing.
DCS Kids Daycare started out in March 2021 inside the Dorchester Consolidated School, and then in 2022 moved to the Dorchester Recreation Centre. Owner Kirsten Weldon says it’s a “fabulous” location. “We love being right by the school, it’s so convenient,” says Weldon. “And we’ve got use of the hockey rink, and the woods, and the park is just down the road. And we’re walking distance to a library.”
Weldon has been looking for ways to expand the after school program capacity at DCS Kids. “We’re getting bigger and bigger, and we have a lot of after school kids,” says Weldon. She recently heard from the Fire Marshall who turned down her application to open up a separate after school location inside the Dorchester Veterans Community Centre on Main Street. So now Weldon is considering a possible expansion at the rec centre. “We do have parents that have said, ‘we’re going to need something for September, do you have space?’ And so we’re kind of juggling the numbers now, to see where we can make it work.”
In addition to approval of a new three year lease, Tantramar council will be considering a zoning change requested by the daycare.
When it first opened up shop, the daycare was considered an ‘educational use’ which is permitted in the ‘village core’ zone in Dorchester’s planning by-law. Then last year when it started to pursue an after school program at the DVCC, the zoning issue came up again.
Though ‘village core’ is Dorchester’s most permissive zone, Plan 360 has recently interpreted the zoning bylaw to exclude daycares in the zone. Planner Lori Bickford explained to council on Monday that because daycares are listed as a specific use in the bylaw under the institutional zone, “we have to go with the assumption that it was intentionally done that way, so that daycares would only be permitted within that one institutional zone.”
Last year, Plan 360 granted DCS Kids a special temporary permit to specifically allow for a daycare, which runs out this fall.
The fix is straightforward: add daycares to the list of permitted uses in the village core zone. But the process is a lengthy one. If council votes yes on May 14, the question will go on to the Southeast Planning and Review Committee and to a public hearing. It will then come back to council for three readings at a minimum of two meetings before the change can be approved.
