City: no daycare on Main Street

Two local residents, Andrea Marconi and Angela Feeley, who appeared a few weeks ago before Grand Coulee’s city council to look into starting a daycare service on Main Street, met the same results again last Tuesday night.

They were informed that it took the city two years to get its zoning ordinance in place, and the city wasn’t interested in changing it. The zoning code doesn’t allow a daycare center in the “central commercial” zone.

Mayor Chris Christopherson encouraged the two to seek a different location, one zoned for their interests.

After their first appearance, the issue was assigned to the council committee on zoning, David Tylor and Tim Alling. Alling had been out of town and the two didn’t get together.

Marconi and Feeley had indicated they were interested in establishing a “much needed” daycare in the Button It building on Main Street when the graphic design business moves into its newly built office and work area next door.

The two reasoned that there is no licensed daycare center in the area’s four municipalities and that workers at the Bureau of Reclamation, schools and hospital need one.

Christopherson said that even if the city revised the code, it would take maybe six months or longer to do so.

Tylor, who commented earlier on the request, had said, “We have to be careful and not put ourselves on the slippery slope in making changes.”

While only a few words in the zoning code would have to be changed, the process would take considerably longer.

A Facebook page started after the two made their initial visit attracted a lot of immediate attention.