The Park City Council discussed its Childcare Needs-Based Scholarship program during its meeting Tuesday. Through the program, Park City and Summit County have jointly contributed almost $2 million to make child care more affordable for local families.
Councilmember Tana Toly said the council has previously focused on providing more preschool spots. But since the Park City School District expanded its preschool programs, affordability — not capacity — is the issue.
“As with everything, the cost is still rising,” she said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Wednesday. “Actually operating a child care facility is going up. It's not necessarily that we need to build another child care facility.”
To help with affordability, the council previously expressed interest in creating more child care provider incentives. To do that, city staff suggested a $100 provider incentive for each child with a scholarship enrolled at a preschool. However, this would require the council to open the budget and allocate up to $70,900 to the program.
Councilmembers didn’t want to reopen the budget and instead wanted to find a way to support childcare long-term.
“We've asked our team, what are the needs in the child care world? Let's find a sustainable funding source for the workforce and for our community members and for our residents, and then let's put that in the budget as a line item,” Toly said.
The council plans to work on adding child care funding during the budget process later this year so the program can continue to be successful.
It has already received national attention and the National League of Cities has invited Park City to participate in the Prenatal-to-Three Impact Lab. It’s an opportunity to connect with peer networks and learn how to tailor resources so cities can improve outcomes for families.
Also Tuesday, the council awarded nonprofit preschool PC Tots $50,000 for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
The city’s Nonprofit Services Advisory Committee recommended awarding PC Tots the money in May of 2025. However, at the time, the council chose to wait on awarding funding for the next fiscal year as it wanted to review potential updates to the Childcare Scholarship Program.
Park City Municipal is a financial supporter of KPCW. For a full list, click here.
