Child care center a go Child care center a go (June 10, 2005)

Council settles years of debate with 5-2 vote for new building

By Jon Wiener

Like a hard-fought basketball game, a city council vote can be even closer than the final score indicates. Such was the case Tuesday night, when proponents won a nail-biting 5-2 vote to fund a child care center in Rengstorff Park.

It was the latest in a series of recent twists in the child care debate. Twice in the past year, council members' comments during study sessions appeared to spell doom for the project, but each time surprising follow-up votes gave the concept new life.

Tuesday's vote came on the heels of a city study that revealed the so-called child care gap was significantly smaller than previously assumed, as well as charges that the center would be too expensive to serve the low-income residents it supposedly targeted.

But despite their concerns over its affordability, Vice Mayor Nick Galiotto and council member Tom Means joined Mayor Matt Neely and fellow members Mike Kasperzak and Laura Macias in voting to allocate $1.9 million out of the upcoming capital project budget to pay for construction of the center.

Like Galiotto, Means was silent for most of the discussion, with council members on both sides of the argument lobbying those who had not stated their position. But right before Neely called the vote on the issue, Means said that the building itself would be worth the cost of construction. "It's going to at least pay for itself," he said. "If we screw it up, and I'm not saying we will, we'll at least have an asset."

Council members Greg Perry and Matt Pear continued to speak out against a project they described as an expensive solution looking for a problem. Perry said that the $1.9 million the city will have to invest up front for the $3.5 million overall project will do little to help low-income families find child care, and that the city should take into account the value of the parkland.

"I really fear what this project is about is taking away an acre of parkland in the poor area of town to provide child care to the middle class area of town, and I have an immense justice problem with that," said Perry.

Perry, who often does quick work with numbers on the dais, said that the project would provide enough subsidies for only seven full scholarships out of 100 total slots. That number, he said, would not even be enough to serve the 20 clients of Healthy Ventures who attended the meeting to show their support for the center.

Perry's proposed amendment, which would have added $2.6 million to buy another acre of parkland in the neighborhood, went nowhere, but many council members did acknowledge the objections. Still, they stressed that the terms of the lease had not yet been negotiated and could always be redone if it becomes necessary. Kasperzak said building the center was really about investing in social infrastructure.

"If we don't make that decision tonight, I think we would look at it as an opportunity lost and I think we would regret that decision for many years," he said.

Tuesday's vote, one in a series of straw votes that won't become official until the council's final budget hearing this coming Tuesday, inserted the child care project into the Capital Improvement Project Budget (frequently called CIP) for the upcoming fiscal year. In straw votes on the rest of the city budget, the council gave the go-ahead to rate increases in the city's trash and sewer services and favored adding a position to the planning department to help speed the permitting process for residential developers.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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