Families affected by Salt Lake County-funded daycare closures speak out

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Families are speaking out about the effects of the Salt Lake County Council’s decision to shut down four county-funded daycare centers.

In a meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 28, the county council voted to close four county-funded daycare centers across the Salt Lake Valley. Within two months all four will be shut down.

“I literally just felt so sick listening to all this,” Stephanie Gardner, a mom who has two children that attend a daycare at the Kearns Rec Center, said. “It just is so wrong.”

“This is not a statutory duty of the county to provide daycare,” County Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton of district 3 said during Tuesday’s hearing. “We have things already in place. We heard about the DWS [Department of Workforce Services] childcare subsidy, which is a very generous subsidy for families. It’s not our job to provide this service.”

“The daycares around are not affordable,” Gardner added. “These companies are not giving affordable care.”

Stefanie Wright, a different mom whose children’s daycare in Millcreek will be shutdown following Tuesday’s vote, spoke with ABC4.com about the closure will affect her kids.

“The [county center] care is high quality and it’s affordable,” Wright said. “Anywhere else… is going to more than double the amount that we have to pay for childcare.”

Wright says the vote was a “big blow” financially, and that her family now faces difficulty finding a new facility within two months.

“Now that the school year is under way… everywhere has a waitlist,” she added. “It’s just not enough time.”

Gardner says she will likely have to pay over $1,000 more per month by sending her kids to other daycares. “I don’t feel like they actually had all the facts.”

In a post to social media, Winder Newton said the cuts came after an extensive report showed an “exorbitant subsidy” was being given by the county.

“This is not the role of county government,” Winder Newton said. “Government cannot and should not be all things to all people. This is not equitable public funding. We don’t know if these families were low income as there were no low-income requirements.”

Winder Newton went on to say that the state already has a childcare subsidy for low- and middle-income families. “We are not best suited to be daycare providers.”

The council voted 5-4 to shut down the centers, voting for the $3 million cut strictly on party lines. Parents have two months to place their children in different childcare centers.

“Cuts like this aren’t easy, but I believe the county needs to focus resources on our most important role – public safety and the criminal justice system. We can’t keep taxing people for things that only a handful of people benefit from and that is not part of our statutory duty,” Winder Newton concluded.