Voice of the People: Why the City in the Child Care Business by Tom Schwab - City News Group, Inc.

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Voice of the People: Why the City in the Child Care Business

By Tom Schwab, Former City Manager (1989-2009)
June 1, 2016 at 12:27pm. Views: 13

It may be time for the city to get out of the childcare business, but the two reasons that the city is in the child care business are: 1. When school overcrowding brought on year round school parents were faced with the loss of traditional summer vacation and instead had three to four short breaks between tracts to find care for their children. This created the need for off-track child care that did not exist. To accommodate this need, the staff presented council the option to start city child care including the off-tract program. 2. The shopping center that includes Food Connection and the City of Grand Terrace Child Care Services facility was almost empty. The 8,000 square-foot building was vacated by the engineering business and now occupied by day care. This drained the center and it was nearly failing and mostly vacant. Staff found a developer to partner with the city by buying the old engineering building and creating a partnership to use the city funds to remodel the center and bring it back to life. Food Connection was interested but wanted the guaranteed 250 trips a day the child care facility would provide by traffic of parents picking up and dropping off their children. The shopping center was remodeled with the towers and river rock theme. We always tried to price the fee parents paid to cover all the costs of operation so citizens did not subsidize the child care. If that is no longer the case, we should get out of the child care business. The center is an asset. We own the building and the business and can sell the asset as a whole and try to keep the jobs and service locally.

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