All righty, good morning, everybody.

The time is ten oh six AM.

We are gonna call the very first ever Commission on Family Affordability and Child Care Access to Order.

City Clerk, would you please take the role?

Yes, thank you.

Councilmember Maxwell.

Present.

Councilmember Perea present.

Council President Esparza.

Present.

Three members being present, we have a quorum.

Okay, next up is the Pledge of Allegiance.

Councilmember Perea, would you please lead us in the pledge?

Okay, being our first meeting, this will be a relatively short agenda that we have here today.

But Secretary, are there any changes that we have to today's agenda?

There are no changes.

Okay.

Um any other proposed changes to the agenda.

I'll take it to my colleagues, numerical order, Councilmember Perea.

Council President Esparza.

Okay, is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Motion to approve.

Motion by Esparza, second by a Perea.

Any opposition.

Seeing none, the agenda for this meeting is approved.

Well now I'll move on to member reports and comments.

Again, I'll go in numerical order, starting with Councilmember Perea.

Good morning, everyone.

Um just a few remarks as we kick things off with this um brand new commission.

First of all, I want to just thank my council colleagues for um taking the initiative and helping um working kick together to help get this commission kicked off.

Um but child care is an issue that is not often talked about here in our city, especially um those first hand experiences of what it means to be able to wake up in the morning and have the ability to go to work versus needing to stay home because you do not have quality or affordable uh child care just to kind of help you go about your your daily lives.

And um, in many cases, it ends up being the woman of the household who ends up staying home to care for children.

And so this is an opportunity for us to have a really um long overdue discussion about what are the impacts to families here in the city of Fresno when it comes to lack of available child care.

Um this is an opportunity to talk about how we can join efforts with our nonprofit partners, our county partners, and really get a better feel for where are the missing gaps when it comes to how we can better collaborate and fill a much needed service in our city, which is child care um access and affordability.

So my time on this commission will be short, it'll be a few months.

And um, if all things go right, then I look forward to supporting the commission in my new capacity at the state level.

So thank you for having me serve in this capacity and looking forward to uh future discussions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Council President Esparza.

Yeah, Council Vice President.

Um, I want to thank you for your your efforts on this.

Um, as we begin uh this commission, this commission starts on its on its long, hopefully long journey.

Uh I'll remind everyone it's not the city of Fresno's first foray into uh child care policy.

We have we had in years past uh some allocations uh during kind of the COVID era uh where we uh as a city were in support of uh trying to include increased child care slots and capacity uh help all families within the city.

Uh so I um just very pleased to see that you know we're formalizing uh these efforts and uh you know very intentionally uh taking a step forward as a city and supporting uh our families on a more structural and sustainable uh level uh with with this commission and hopefully with some of these uh folks that we appoint, uh we're going to appoint here uh today.

Um so just want to say thank you, and um, you know, I'm glad to be part of uh this portion of the city's history.

Thank you, Council President.

Um and thank you again to my colleagues for being willing to step up to the plate and be part of the solution for coming up with child care solutions here in the city of Fresno.

One of the reasons I decided to call this commission together, something that we've never had before in the city of Fresno is because it is one of the biggest issues, one of the biggest economic and financial hurdles facing our Fresno families, regardless of what part of the city that you live in.

We know that there's families out there paying between 15 to 2,000 a month for child care for just one child, and that is a mortgage for some people, that is rent for a lot of people, that is utility bills that could be paid, and that's just for one child.

That doesn't take into account if you have multiple children, that doesn't take into account if you have a young child or child that has special needs that requires additional care.

And so the reason that I am calling this commission together is because it is time for the city of Fresno to get aggressive about solving the child care crisis here in the city of Fresno.

It is an entire ecosystem.

Um we have children that can't afford to enroll in child care across the city of Fresno.

And even if every single family and every single child could afford child care in the city of Fresno, there are not enough slots by even a close margin to accommodating every single child that requires care here in the city of Fresno.

And we know that despite the high cost of child care in the city of Fresno, um it doesn't often equate to higher wages for our child care workers.

And so we have an ecosystem crisis here of workers, business owners that we have a lack of, and scholarship and slot opportunities for our children.

And so the intention behind this commission is to come up with policy solutions to alleviate the child care burden for our children to help create policies that make it easier to start new child care businesses to better compensate child care workers across our city, and also to come up with a long-term solution for how we can afford subsidized child care here in the city of Fresno.

And so that'll conclude my remarks, and at this time we'll move on to any unscheduled communication.