Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning and welcome to the June 17th Health and Safety Committee meeting.

My name is Daryl Watson.

I'm honored to serve as the chair of this committee, as well as a city council member representing all of the fine district nine.

We have one action item this morning, a public comment, and four items on consent.

But before we roll to the action item, I'll start first in a room with introductions and I'll go online for any of the council members that are signing in virtually, and we'll start on my right.

Oh, on the right.

Okay.

Uh Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

I was going to do a home alone.

Kevin!

It was the under the younger leader.

I almost formed drivers yet because of that.

Good morning.

Paul Cashman, South Denver District.

District 6.

And for our council members are online, I believe that we have Councilmember Sawyer and Councilmember Parity.

Sawyer first.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

And I don't believe we have Councilmember Parity quite yet.

That is fine.

Well, we have a presentation from our good friends from the uh from OCA, the uh Office of Children Affairs.

And I want to turn them over to them for introductions, and the floor is yours for your presentation.

Awesome.

Thank you, McCouncilman.

Uh thank you, Councilman Watson.

And I'm actually really excited that uh OCA is joined by some friends.

Um my name is Ray Katares, I lead the policy work in OCA, but I'm joined by some friends from some other agencies, so I'll toss it over to them to introduce themselves.

Hi everyone, I'm Abby Soysan.

I'm a senior policy analyst with the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, formerly excise and licenses.

Hi everyone, I'm Nicole Caldwell with DDPHE, and I'm a manager in our public health investigations division overseeing the child care program.

Awesome.

Well, we're really excited to be here because you've seen this group effort.

We can roll in with a big squad today, um, because of this change that we're going to be proposing.

So we're gonna be talking today about um streamlining the process for child care providers to open and operate um here in the city and county of Denver by removing a local license requirement.

Um so just to go over a little bit of the agenda, we'll give you a little bit of the state of play currently for child care in Denver.

We'll um talk a little bit about how this multi-agency group has come together, and then we'll also um we'll get into why we're removing this license and where we see the redundancy, uh, and then we'll also get into how we're gonna maintain some enforcement on the back end, outline what we think the impact is, and then start talking about what the next steps will look like for child care here in Denver.

So here's our proposed change in one slide.

Uh we're proposing to remove the Denver business license for child care uh licensing without any changes to the health and safety standards or requirements that currently exist.

Um, mostly to update uh to become in uh in alignment with the state's licensing process and to remove the redundancies for child care providers.

So the state of play here for child care.

Um, I think anyone with kids or who knows someone who has young kids in Denver or anywhere in the country would uh tell you that child care we're in a child care crisis.

Um, and it goes both on the supply and the cost of care for infants and toddlers.

Uh the average cost of care in Denver for infants and toddlers, so anyone who's zero to three years old is right around $20,000 on an annual budget.

Um, and I'm looking around the room and I'm seeing some um some faces like that is even far too low for what they're experiencing.

Um, but that average is right around $20,000.

Just for some perspective, that's 18 to 25% of a family's uh annual income.

And if you're a single parent, that number jumps up to about 40 percent.

Um, the rate of inflation for child care has outpaced inflation for most other grades and services in our economy, just from 2020 to 2024.

The rate of inflation for child care was at 29 percent.

Again, just vastly outpacing anybody's ability to keep up with cost.

Part of that is because when uh the pandemic hit child care centers were some of the most impacted.

Um, but they were also some of the fastest to get online because we knew what the economic uh impact and what the economic value was for those centers being opened so that parents could go to work.

Um, and Colorado uh is one of the most expensive places for child care in the country.

We rank seventh in terms of average cost, and that is largely being driven by the cost of care here in the city and county.

Um, that number is Denver is about forty-nine percent higher than the uh national average for child care.

So the and this graph on the right shows that we are just not even close to hitting the supply.

We have about 31,000 kids, better between that zero and three age range, and we have about 4,000 license slots for those kids.

Now not every uh family chooses license care, and that's totally uh reasonable, but we don't even have that option right now for families, and that scarcity is what's driving a lot of the cost.

So, uh beginning of the year, Mayor Johnson announced his uh 2026 goals that we were going to take on as a city, and one of them was the child friendly goal.

So, in addition to connecting young people with summer jobs and out-of-school time programming, which um we're seeing some tremendous initial numbers in that regard.

He also outlined the goal to set forward a comprehensive plan for affordable and accessible childcare for all Denver families.

So this is really uh as a part of that effort is us trying to get our arms around what are the levers that we can pull at this at the local level to ensure that every Denver family has access to high quality and affordable child care.

That really is what brought us brought this group together is to understand what the supply side uh challenges were so that we could unlock more availability and more availability faster.

So we brought together this group with the express um mission of streamlining the process, reducing the barriers that providers were experiencing in opening and operating so we can get more slots available, we can get more kids in seats, hopefully drive costs down when we scale that up.

So we have representatives from licensing and consumer protection and DDPHE at the table.

We've also had tremendous support from Denver Fire, and Lieutenant Reed is in the crowd right now to speak to some of that.

Um, and we've had tremendous support from our city attorney's office.

This group was brought together to understand what the um multi-agency impacts that we have as a city on our child care providers would be and how we can start to alleviate unnecessary steps, duplicative processes, unnecessarily costly steps, too.

And one of the pieces that we came across was the licensing piece for the city and county.

Um, but again, our goal is to reduce these barriers without any compromise to health and safety.

And I just will continue to say that over and over because I I don't want anyone to think that we're changing any of our standards for what high quality looks like here in the city and county.

So our group had three primary goals was to one, reduce the barriers that providers experience.

Um I will say that the city is has taken a lot of steps in the past to make this an easier process, specifically for child care providers, um, and we are continuing to identify what barriers are when they arise.

Um, this group is also aimed at streamlining processes for maximum efficiency.

Um, when child care providers sign a lease, but they're having to wait to actually have their first day of classes and and their first day of care, that's lost cost, and that's not uh maximizing the efficiency for those providers.

The third thing, and again, I'll just continue to say is we are not we're gonna do all this without any compromise to health and safety for our young people and for staff because that ultimately is still the goal of both OCA and DDPHE and really every city agency that interacts with any business in the city.

So I'll stop talking there and pass it over to Abby who can talk more about the license itself.

So just for some background on the licensing requirement, there's two types of child care licenses that we issue at licensing and consumer protection.

Um one is the child care center license.

This is more for the commercial facilities that offer care for five or more children through the age of 16 years old, and then the child care home license, which is for private residences that provide care for up to 12 children.

Um these licenses are issued pursuant to chapter 11 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code, which governs child care establishments, as well as chapter 32, which governs our licenses generally.

Um then those uh child care establishments are also subject to state law, state requirements, and then the Board of Health regulations for child care facilities, which happen to be exactly the same as the state regulations for child care facilities.

So there is some duplication there.

Notably, House Bill 21 1222 at the state legislature directed local jurisdictions to treat child care homes as residences for the purposes of inspections, so basically preempting local jurisdictions from doing any type of health fire zoning inspections at child care homes.

So the license for child care homes doesn't have any inspections associated with it.

It's just a license that they have to get in addition to their state license.

The child care center license does have inspections associated with it, but those are inspections that are also required for the state license.

So there's duplication there as well.

The fee for child care facilities is based on how many children they're serving.

So for one to eight children, the license fee is $25.

It's 100 for 9 to 25 children and 200 for 26 or more children.

Notably, our child care centers can get their fees waived if they are a nonprofit, and that's pursuant to department rules.

And about 60% of our child care centers get their fees waived because they are nonprofits.

And so altogether, these licenses in 2025 generated about $30,000 of revenue from their license B.

So kind of from a high level, you know, why do we license businesses in the city of Denver?

Denver only requires a license for those businesses and occupations that require some additional oversight and some level of agency coordination to protect public health and safety.

Licensing kind of serves two purposes it's the clearing house on the front end to make sure that the businesses have passed all of their inspections and met all of the requirements to operate the business in the city of Denver.

On the back end, it's also sort of an additional enforcement tool that we have where we can take disciplinary action if there's a cause for it or revoke or suspend the license if there's a cause for it.

Typically, Denver doesn't require a local license for businesses or occupations that are already licensed by the state.

So for example, massage therapists are licensed by the state, and so we don't have a local license for massage therapists.

We do have a local license for massage businesses because those are not licensed by the state.

That's typically how it works.

There are some exceptions to that, including for marijuana businesses and liquor businesses.

State law requires that we issue those local licenses.

And then for tobacco retailers, natural medicine healing centers, and child care facilities, we also issue a local license in addition to the state license.

And just as kind of a fun fact, the last time Denver completely repealed a license requirement was in 2016 with our taxi license, and that was also due to duplicative state licensing requirements.

So with all that in mind, I'll pass it to Nicole to talk more about the duplication.

Right.

So as Rhett has emphasized, and I'm gonna emphasize again we are not compromising health and safety in any way.

We're just removing duplicative processes, and this is a really nice slide to show you exactly that.

So currently, the only thing that the city process is adding to health and safety is just the fact that there's an additional license that they have to get.

But the zoning approval, the health inspections, the fire inspections, those will all remain because they're required for the state license to be obtained.

So GDPHE will retain its authority, we will have the same level of involvement in child care facilities as we do today.

In addition to that, the state actually does, you know, very extensive inspections and they have extensive licensing requirements.

So they're looking at appropriate qualifications for staff, they're making sure that they have first aid and CPR and universal precaution certifications, they're doing CBI and FBI criminal background checks that are a fingerprinting check, and they also do um a check in a database that shows whether or not someone's ever been founded for abuse or neglect against a child.

So they're they're doing a really deep dive into the providers that are caring for the children, and then they're also looking at appropriate equipment and materials in the classroom, square footage requirements, and all of those things.

So those things will also remain.

So what did we change?

Chapter 11 currently is what governs child care establishments, and that's where DDPHE gets its authority to inspect these facilities, and also the chapter that requires the license.

So what we're proposing is to clean it up, bring it up to date.

There's an old provision in there regarding wooden place structures.

That was a thing back in the 80s and 90s when they were using toxic chemicals to treat these wooden play structures.

Those don't really exist in Denver anymore.

There are a handful of facilities that still even have wooden structures, and my team has been tracking those and ensuring that toxic chemicals aren't being utilized.

So we're striking that provision, and then updating the definitions to align with the state definitions of child care facility types.

And then, like I mentioned, we wanted to ensure that DDPHE retains our authority to conduct the health and sanitation inspections.

So we called that out specifically.

And then obviously removed the language regarding the license requirement in the city.

Great.

So what this change would do is it removes a significant step in the process for providers that they just currently don't need to do.

And I'll flash to the bottom of this slide because I think it illustrates just even what removing ASTEP does.

We spoke with a local with a CDEC Colorado Department of Early Childhood licensing specialist, and we said that we were exploring this possibility of removing the local licensing requirement in Denver.

And her response was I want to do jumping jacks.

I'm so excited about that.

Which is one a very cute thing to say.

But too indicative of what even taking one thing off the plate of these providers can do.

Child care providers and child care businesses are not like other businesses in the city.

Childcare provider is typically the lead teacher.

They are the lead uh accounting manager, they are facilities maintenance, um, they're therapists, they're coaches for parents and kids, all on top of these other things they have to do that just go with running a business and raising and helping you know contribute to the raising of a child.

Um they're tremendous human beings, and so anything that we can do to take one thing off their plate is um, I mean, we'll will go a long way, I think.

Um what it also I thought that the uh quote belonged to the little kid.

Very well cleared as well.

Yeah, I have not yet asked him his opinion on this, but we'll follow up.

Um what it also does is reduce the cost to open a facility.

Um I don't think that the licensing fee, like Abby said, is the kind of thing that makes or breaks a child care business, but again, it's taking away things that are unnecessary for those providers to do so that they can focus on the things.

I will I will say, and this is no shade on our friends at the state because I think they're doing some great work.

Um, that licensing fee is a lot more expensive than what we're charging here at the city.

So we're not getting uh there's not a lot of juice that we're getting from that squeeze out of our providers when we can take that off their plate.

And again, these are razor thin margins, so anything we can do to give them a little bit of breathing room is worth it.

And then the third thing that this does is to Nicole's point, brings us up to date with some with our language.

This hasn't been updated since the Department of Early Childhood was created at the state, and so this was just a really good opportunity for us to bring some of our language up to date to what the state's requirements are, as well as bring us into you know the year 2026 with a lot of this other language.

Um what this doesn't do, however, this does not compromise health and safety in any way.

Uh if you if I sound like a broken record, this is the broken record I'd like to be because I want to make it abundantly clear that we're keeping um the health and safety of both kids and um faculty um completely safe throughout this.

Now, this doesn't drastically, I'm not gonna pretend that this also drastically opens the floodgates to providers coming in the door tomorrow to start their child care business in Denver.

Um it's we're we're gonna take away a couple a couple weeks out of the process, which I think is worthwhile and important.

Um again, it's one of those things that we don't have to do, we shouldn't do it.

Um, and then we're this doesn't this isn't the silver bullet to solve the child care supply crisis.

This is our first attempt or our first um our first move that I hope signals a continued commitment to making this process smoother.

Our goal is to make Denver the easiest and fastest and most affordable place to open and operate a child care business.

Um, and so part of this one proposal that we're bringing to you is the first and a longer list of actions that we hope will continue to make that a reality.

Um I'd love to talk a little bit about our engagement process.

This wasn't just these wonderful folks coming together.

We have talked with a number of different people to make sure that we were being mindful to all of the different perspectives.

This proposal has gone through multiple internal reviews within both our teams.

The Child Friendly Tiger team has vetted this multiple times.

So there's been multi-agencies, both those involved and kind of on the outside of this exact change.

We've had tremendous engagement with our friends at the Denver Preschool Program and Denver Early Childhood Council.

Again, people who are working day in and day out with these providers who understand these struggles more, more intimately.

And then we've had tremendous conversations and alignment with our colleagues over at the Department of Early Childhood and Conroe Department of Human Services who also currently have oversight into all these types of pro all these types of licensing systems.

In terms of next steps, what we're gonna continue to do, and as I alluded to, we're gonna continue to work with providers and families to understand what those needs are so that we can continue to bring hopefully more proposals to you all to help make this uh this child care landscape um easier, more high quality, more affordable for everyone involved.

Um, and we're gonna continue to work with our agency partners.

I will I should have said this at the front end, but OCA has no regulatory authority over any of these processes.

I'm so grateful to our friends at DDPHE licensing fire and all the people who actually do have oversight into these processes into these processes that they allowed um OCA to be a part of this and to bring folks to the table to have these conversations.

Um we think that there's a lot of value in that.

Um, and so that's even sparked further conversations into broader and more um more spaces where we can make some uh we're where we can pull levers here at the local level.

Um, and we're just gonna continue to ask tough questions about what we can do at the local level and how we can support at the state level to make this process again easier, faster, and more affordable for providers so that it can be easier, faster, and more affordable for families.

But that's it.

That's all we have, but we're happy to answer any questions.

Um, yeah, thank you.

Well, thank you so much.

Uh Rhett and team.

I should have started by saying, first, actually, let me introduce and welcome Councilmember Perry for joining us.

Um I should have started by saying uh when I was a kid, many, many, many, many moons ago, on Saturday morning, there was this TV uh cartoon called Wonder Twins.

And the Wonder Twins would come together and say, Wonder twins connect, and they will connect, and there'll be some noise, and they'll have all of this great power.

I say all this because the three of you are our wonder twins.

When you bring together um uh licensing, you bring together DDPHE and OCA, and all three of you um working on something, um, uh it is exciting, and so I wanted to thank you all for your good work and that of all the folks on your teams with putting together all your good powers to bring forward such an important um piece of uh uh important change.

So before we go to city council queue, we have a public comment section here to they today this afternoon, and we have uh Moeth Beisho.

Um is the only person that signed up.

I don't see Moad in the audience, and I am looking to see if he is possibly virtual.

That's question two to producer.

I don't see that he is virtual.

So the queue for city council members is open.

Um, and we begin first with Councilmember Cashman and then Councilmember Flynn.

Uh thank you, committee chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

100% supportive.

I had a uh summer uh uh camp daycare provider a few years ago begging for this change, and he just kept saying the state's doing all of this.

All this does is hang us up and trying to get moving.

So I thanks for doing this great, great, great move.

But one clarification I wanted to get in the presentation, uh, what I thought I heard was that the state is uh very attentive to uh health and safety inspections and so on, but you're retaining your right to do health, kind of confused them.

Yeah, it's confusing.

So um, and I remember that conversation, Councilman Cashman.

I remember that, yes.

Um, so we're talking about multiple state agencies here that have oversight.

Um, CDEC and CDHS, the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and the Colorado Department of Human Services, they are the ones that are doing the background checks, checking equipment and materials, checking um teacher trainings and qualifications, those are the types of inspections they do.

DDPHE does the public health inspection.

So the state's not doing the state is not, um, but we do what CDPHE does.

So our regulations are the same as C DPHG's, which is the state public health department.

So that's the other state entity.

So we are in alignment with them when it comes to public health standards, and that's what we look for in our inspections.

Um, standards are the same, we're doing the inspections, state health is not.

Correct.

Thank you for the clarification.

That's all committee chair.

Great question, Councilmember Cashman.

Councilman Flynn.

Um, Mr.

Chair, uh, could it appreciate some clarification so I understand?

Because generally the purpose of our licensing is that we know these businesses exist, and we can then do inspections or enforce regulations, etc.

So, how closely explain how closely we coordinate and how will we know that there's a new home child care facility or somebody providing care in their home, for example.

Uh does the state routinely share their licensing with us?

Do we have access to that?

Help me help me understand that.

I'm happy to cover if you can.

Uh so yes, they do share that information with us, although currently um we're not in family child care homes because they are not required to have health inspections.

We are aware of child care homes and their existence, and it's all public record as well on the CDEC and CDHS websites.

Um so we know that that's that's going on, but our involvement currently in those spaces, it doesn't exist.

Okay, so if there is a and I'd hate to imagine it, but a bad actor out there, what is our what our what are our recourse of tools?

So, like I mentioned, we called out specifically DDPHE's authority to enter those spaces as needed under public health authority.

So while they're not uh family child care homes are not required to have a health inspection in order to become licensed, the health department could step into a family child care home if needed.

And we have in the past for um outbreaks and things like that.

Yeah.

And for a child care center, just to even lay that one out, we would DDPHE would still retain the authority to enforce the public health authority there, and the state could then suspend the licensor or have other sanctions against their like their state-issued child care license if needed.

And to add on to that too, um, so centers, summer camps, and other program preschools, they're all required to have our inspection in order to get their state license.

So that will all remain.

We will still be doing routine inspections in those spaces responding to complaints and outbreaks just like we do currently.

Um we have been asked by the state in the past to help them with egregious situations that needed an immediate cease and desist, and we will continue to have that authority as well.

There was the I remember an example where they needed to shut down a child care facility due to an infant fatality, but they had to go through um the state process and the AG's office, and so DDPHE was able to step in, issue a cease and desist order and stop the operation that day.

So things like that will remain, and we will continue to partner with the state when they need us.

Okay.

And in the other direction, if we if we identified a violation or had a problem at a facility, obviously we can't revoke their license, but the state would work with us on an issue if it were serious enough that it required a revocation or some kind of action against the state license.

Correct.

And the state has robust processes and different options for licenses.

They can put them on probation, they can do summary suspensions, they can do full revocations.

And oftentimes they'll reach out to the other enforcement agencies to see what compliance looks like in those spaces.

So yeah, if if we came across something egregious, we would absolutely report it to the state, and they could decide whether or not they wanted to take licensing action.

But like I said, if if we came across something egregious, we could also take action against that facility immediately and issue a cease and dissist.

We have other mechanisms.

Correct.

Okay, because I tend to be a little more cautious about turning over some responsibility to a higher level of government because I've always felt that the local uh the local level can be not always is, but can be much more responsive than you know, calling the state.

I would call the city before I call the state.

Right.

So I'm cautiously supportive, uh, just need to have a comfort level, and by the time this gets to council, I'll have done my due diligence on it.

So I appreciate it.

Yeah, that's fair.

Those are my concerns.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Councilmember Castman.

Yeah, sorry, a couple things came to mind.

Uh, first of all, um, why are we so much more expensive in child care costs?

What's that about?

That's a it's a great question, and it's got a lot of layers to it.

Um, I think that it's expensive to do business in the city for any number of reasons, which I would, you know, I could start to list them off, but then I might start to make some people uncomfortable with me talking too much about the business state versus the child care.

Um, so I think that that what is challenging for all businesses is challenging for child care businesses.

Um, again, I think we have a recognition that child care businesses are not like other businesses.

There's less of a profit motive.

Um, so again, like Abby said, most of the child care um providers in the city are are not profits, and they are trying to provide care at a low cost to families to keep them and to provide that care while still making that their primary income.

So I think that the nature of the businesses of a child care business specifically is different.

Um, I think it's there are challenges for businesses across the city.

Um I think having um some of these maybe not not as necessary regulations is a challenge, and that's why we you know started down this path.

So um yeah, I wouldn't give too much of a uh business analytical answer.

That's definitely getting outside of my lane.

Um, but I would just say that child care businesses have some of the same struggles and then some other um considerations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh yeah, because it did we're not the only expensive city uh to do business, and so yeah, I'd love to try to dig up some more info on that.

The other thing I'm wondering, I think uh in one of your earlier slides, you showed we've got a population of about 31,000, and we've got about 4,000 slots available.

How does that compare with other cities?

Any idea?

Um, yeah, so that for the zero to three, we're probably pretty close to on par with some pure cities.

Um, yeah, it's I mean, again, we have nationally, this is a crisis like Denver's, um, as much as I think we're special in this regard, we are not special and unique.

Um, I think a lot of jurisdictions across the country are trying to figure out how we can better support the early child care space.

Some cities are doing it um in different ways, and some people some places are getting more creative.

Uh, I'm sure you you're familiar with New Mexico.

Um just is built out their base their early child care um system, which basically pulls their K-12 system down to zero to five.

That's funded by a massive amount of oil and gas money.

Um, some uh San Antonio, I was just reading it has a really robust zero to five pipeline.

They have some different considerations that maybe to earn as relevant to our context.

New York is obviously in the is in the news a lot.

Um we don't have the same number of pieditaire uh establishments that we can uh point to to tax at that rate.

So um there are a lot of places grappling with this and and trying to do some different things to figure figure out what works in their context, and so this is definitely part of what we're we're figuring out now, too.

Do we have any idea how many um in summertime for how many kids are not getting care or left feral for lack of a better word?

You know, parents are working and kids who are young enough that deserve some sort of uh care, don't have it.

Are you talking about like um summer programs like summer camps and yeah, like they're not going to summer camp?

They're they don't have uh uh an in-house uh care provider, they're just left left at home uh while their parents are at work.

I don't know that I'd have an exact number, I'd be happy to ask around.

I can tell you that right now through OCA funded programs this summer alone.

We have about 28,000 kids in programming.

Um I'm doing some rough math here, but I believe there are 90,000 students in DPS, so I'm trying to do that back in the NAPCA math as on the fly here, but it's I would say it's a substantial number of kids that are in program, and it's also a substantial number that are not in any informal.

I don't to the extent that they're in some non-supported uh or some other non-supportive care and that are just kind of roaming the streets.

I don't know that I have a great number for you, but I'd be happy to ask around.

Well, this is just an extension of our ongoing conversation.

We ain't doing right by our kids yet.

We're just not.

But I thank thank OCA and the rest of you for what you are doing.

Thank you.

That's all, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Cashman.

Um, I have a quick question.

Um uh, and you may not have this.

Uh, I didn't ask this during my briefing.

Um, we've seen across the country uh lower birth rates, uh lower percentages of uh families having uh kids, um having a later age.

Has there been any forecasting on that impact on that kind of that that span, that difference in amount of children that's needing um uh support for child care, etc.

I have has anyone done any kind of um diagnosis on that, any impacts of that spread to 30,000 in the next five to 10 years or any of that stuff.

That's a great question.

And I I believe there are several groups doing that work.

Um, and I know the Denver Preschool Program is I think their data team is pretty um incredible at the way that they have been able to forecast out.

So I'd be happy to loop their team in and maybe see if we can't get that.

I also know that um we've had some conversations with our city economists um about kind of what this looks like long term, and I know that that's you know, she's pretty incredible about thinking about things on a longer term basis than just uh the one-year cycle.

So um that's a great question.

It's something that we think about because we see the trends that are that everyone sees, and that um DPS is feeling declining enrollment.

Um it's again, it's Denver's an expensive city to live in, so places outside of the city are becoming uh a hub for children.

I know um this is something that Denver Preschool program pointed out that there are actually families moving into Denver for preschool because we have uh a better investment for three and four-year-olds than other places do.

But um, again, it's there's still a gap, and we're we're definitely trying to fill it as best we can, but I can definitely look into some of that longer term forecasting.

Thank you so much, Red.

I want to look around the room and then check online to see if there are any uh additional questions.

I do see council member parity.

Um, if you'd like to join the queue, I'll turn over to floor to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's really more of a comment, so I'll keep it pretty quick.

I just was really surprised.

This is something I run into as a parent of young kids, obviously, as any parent of young kids would, but the costs are just pretty unbelievable.

I've told people this before, but even uh with two kids in public school, um, one who's an ECE and my family doesn't qualify for a sliding scale, so we we pay for that.

But one who's you know fully in DPS, just the aftercare alone being a council member um takes more than half my council salary.

So it I don't really know how other parents are surviving.

I know um a young woman who I've been a mentor to since she was a teenager, who also has small kids, and she for a while her system was that she would um work nights, she would wake up in the morning or not wake up, come home from work in the morning, get her older daughter to school, take her son to her mom's house, spend a couple hours, you know, making school lunches and cleaning and that kind of thing, sleep for a couple hours and then pick both her kids up, spend the evening with them and then do it again, which is not a way to live.

So um, and then when I started asking around as a new council member, um, I was actually pretty surprised how much of this was really about building code and all of that, and just the spaces that centrists can operate in because I hadn't expected that.

It was like sort of a blind spot that I had, so just want to express my gratitude, and that's all.

No actual questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Parity, and Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, really appreciate this uh work.

I'm very supportive of it.

I think that this is the first piece in a number of different things that we need to do.

And I will tell you, I am working from home today for this exact reason because uh I've got teenagers and they are home and it's summer and they need supervision, and so I'm very grateful that I can work remotely on days like this, um, so that I can you know ensure that I'm doing all the things, but it feels a little like COVID because I'm managing a lot of things uh all in my house at the same time, and it is not easy.

So um, I just want to say thank you.

I want to acknowledge this work.

I'm very supportive of it.

Um, I am a yes on moving it forward to the floor.

Um, but just you know, want to flag we're talking about early childhood education here, um, but there is a whole spectrum of kids who are running around feral, including my teenagers at this moment um this summer.

And so um, you know, there's there's more work to be done, and I do think Councilmember Parity really flagged some of the other changes.

I hope this is step one um of a kind of multi-step fix.

So just wanted to say that.

Really appreciate it um and supportive of this to move it to the floor.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Parity, both for joining virtually.

Um, one more uh call around the room to see if there's anyone else.

Um a quick comment.

We have one of those feral children right here in chambers, actually in the the council office towns is running around.

I don't know if the camera can get to him.

Um I know his dad is my council aide, uh, would love to get him into uh um daycare.

Just kidding, he's gonna be going to camp in a few weeks.

Um but uh we do love the their old instead runner.

Uh city council every now and then.

This is an action item.

Um, just looking to see if this needs to motion by council member Flynn second by the second voting members.

You have voting member Cashman?

I wish that I was.

I'm just Riff Rif.

Okay, second.

Yep, I can second as well.

Okay, you guys can hear us.

So move by um uh Flynn seconded, I heard from Parity first.

Um, is there a need for a vote, voice vote?

Seeing none by acclamation, everyone's good to move to the floor.

So be it.

Thank you all for being here.

We have four items on consent, and with that, uh the meeting is adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.