Several women and mothers shared their concerns at the Summit County Council meeting Wednesday.
Most were from the county’s west side, some from the county’s east, and all of them asked the county to allocate public funding toward easing access to child care here.
Similar to affordable housing in the Wasatch Back, child care centers run long waitlists. Most women who spoke, like Mackenzie Genecov from Oakley, said it took them at least a year to get into a program.
“Several of the child care centers require a $600 up to $1,000 commitment fee just to get on the waitlist, which is nonrefundable,” Genecov told the council. “So I didn't want to put that much money out without knowing I had a guaranteed spot.”
Long waitlists mean even families who start looking before their child is born don’t get child care until months after the baby arrives. Snyderville Basin resident Ingrid Whitley waited over a year too.
“That was also putting [my daughter] on waitlists in Salt Lake County,” she said. “So we were willing to commute and also did not get a spot until she was almost 4 months old.”
And that situation is expected to get worse starting Sept. 30 when child care funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, passed during early 2021, will end.
According to advocacy group Voices for Utah Children, $2.8 million of that made its way to Summit County providers through Utah’s Division of Workforce Services Office of Child Care.
Brigette Weier is the top organizer at Voices for Utah Children’s Care for Kids Network and was at the county council meeting Wednesday. She said child care workers earn an average hourly wage of $12.51 in Summit County.
“Dog walkers make more money than people that take care of our beloved children here in this state,” Weier said.
Weier said there’s another group people don’t often hear about: the families who can’t find child care.
That’s because one parent exits the workforce to look after the kids. She said it's disproportionately women who leave their jobs.
“That's not something we hear a lot about because it looks like a choice, versus a forced reality of the situation,” Weier said.
Right now, there’s no formal proposal for the county council to evaluate or approve. The Park City Council approved $1 million in one-time stopgap funding this June and subsequently formed a working group to figure out how to allocate it.
Summit County councilmembers have signaled they’d prefer to form a working group first before earmarking funds.
Members of the council present Wednesday, all of them parents, empathized with the women who spoke. Councilmember Canice Harte, who works on child care issues with Council Vice Chair Malena Stevens, said stakeholders are meeting to formulate a formal proposal.
“Then once we get something, then you can see the council can then really dig in on and start to look at what's possible,” Harte said. “So it's going to be a process; it's going to take some time. But I wanted to thank you, because without your voices, without you coming forward, this conversation wouldn't really be happening.”
Council Chair Roger Armstrong said the county’s budget cycle is coming to an end, and with an additional $5 million being added for emergency medical services, there might not be room for last-minute child care funding this year.
In the meantime, Armstrong has repeatedly asked businesses to step up.
“This is a benefit,” he said. “This is an employment benefit, is how I regard it. If you have an employee that has children that need child care, our businesses or industries within this community need to figure out a way to help supplement that.”
He said he’s not opposed to using public money because the county is pursuing adding child care to its own employee’s benefits. He said the county has cut impact fees in half for new potential child care centers.
Councilmembers Chris Robinson and Malena Stevens weren’t at Wednesday’s meeting. Tonja Hanson also thanked the women who spoke. The councilmember said she’d like to hear men speak up about the child care crisis, too.
“This is a random question, ladies,” Hanson said, “but where are the husbands and dads?”
Apparently they were at home; someone’s still got to look after the kids.
