The city offers special passes for low- and fixed-income residents to ensure they are able to access recreation programs to support their health and wellbeing. This key result focuses on increasing use of these passes. This project is near completion. Research has been completed and presented to council in Q4. New criteria were developed based on the demographics of Maple Ridge residents and Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut Off scale (LICO) that is regularly updated based on national income statistics.
Recreation Services saw an 11.6% Increase in Financial Access members from 2024 to 2025, meeting this goal.
Work will continue to maintain and increase participation in the program. Staff received council approval on the new Financial Access Policy for 2026. Staff are now working on an implementation plan for this policy and will have this in place by the end of February and the program monitored and statistics tracked to see how successful the new policy was in providing greater access to financial assistance in recreation and if we able to reach 10% more of residents being subsided.