Street parking policy risks the safety of our children

WE are educators at a small Lady Gowrie community kindergarten on the beachfront in Broadbeach that has been educating and caring for children since 1953.

We would like to express our concerns at the parking changes soon to be implemented in the area surrounding our kindergarten.

Council has approved a large number of highrise developments in our area — many of which began construction in 2017. We appreciate the need for development and the works that have to be completed before the opening of the Commonwealth Games – but we implore Gold Coast City Council to not compromise on the safety of our children when continuing to approve development.

Council has notified us that both three and four-hour regulated parking will soon be implemented in our area but has set aside 56 unregulated car spaces to be used by community organisations – including the car park adjacent to our kindergarten – which has served us and our neighbours, the Broadbeach Soccer Club, the Broadbeach Croquet Club, the Royal Queensland Arts Society and Broadbeach Bowls Club, for over 60 years. However, these car spaces are now used by local tradespeople and are all full every weekday by 6am. This will only worsen once regulated parking is introduced leaving us with no off street parking and safe access to our kindergarten jeopardised.

Council has provided five drop-off zones between the hours of 8.30-9.30am and 2.15-3.15pm which were welcomed by the kindergarten but they are not being observed and tradespeople continue to use spaces between these hours.

We have approached the developers of the complexes around us as well as the tradespeople parking in the car park and surrounding roads to be aware of the need for children to have safe access to our kindergarten, but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

We have been blessed for many years to welcome children in a quiet and peaceful enclave of Broadbeach. Armrick Avenue was generally only used by local residents and provided safe and easy access to our car park. Today, Armrick Ave is a very busy through road used by many commuters to bypass the Gold Coast Highway on their daily travels to work and school. Cars can be seen travelling at speed as they come around the corner from Broadbeach Boulevard and show little regard for the safety of our children.

TransLink has recently installed two bus stops right outside the kindergarten. The installation of these mean a loss of another 10 car spaces – which our area can ill afford. Although we would hope that a bus stop right outside our kindergarten would enable families to travel to us each day via public transport, we cater to many families who travel vast distances to attend our centre.

Our centre is NOT a child care centre. We operate to school terms, have only two educators employed and one part-time administrator. We cater for only 44 children per week, with 22 children attending each day. Our staff/ child ratio must comply with regulations at one educator for every 11 children.

We have explained to council that should we, as educators, be unable to park in the unregulated car park we would then be required to move our cars every three or four hours. This would mean 22 children being left in the care of just one qualified educator. This would be at variance with the regulations we work under. Should one educator leave the centre to move their car to comply with council regulations and an incident with one of our children occur we would be subject to legal action due to failure to comply with legislation.

Our final correspondence with the Mayor’s representative was received on December 18, 2017. We were informed at the end of the correspondence, “due to the level of resources and time the City has already invested in responding to the Broadbeach Kindergarten communications, the Mayor has advised that this will be the City’s final response on this matter”.

It is evident to us that this council favours development over long-standing community organisations and we wonder what it will take for it to see the long-term implications of its decisions.

KATHRYNE POWELL, LIBBY POWER AND DANIELLE SORENSEN, BROADBEACH KINDERGARTEN