Health Safety Education and Services - Regular Meeting

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 Darrell Watson. I'm honored to serve as the chair of this committee as well as a city council member representing all of Define District 9. 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 the 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. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

I was going to do a home alone. Kevin!

It was the other way. I almost flunked driver's ed because of that.

Good morning. Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

And for our council members that are online, I believe that we have Council Member Sawyer and Council Member 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 OCA, the 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, Councilman Watson. And I'm actually really excited that OCA is joined by some friends. My name is Ray Gutierrez. 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 Soisan. 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 came rolling with a big squad today because of this change that we're going to be proposing. So we're going to be talking today about streamlining the process for child care providers to open and operate here in the city and county of Denver by removing a local license requirement. 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 talk a little bit about how this multi-agency group has come together. And then we'll also get into why we're removing this license and where we see the redundancy. And then we'll also get into how we're going to 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. We're proposing to remove the Denver business license for childcare licensing without any changes to the health and safety standards or requirements that currently exist. Mostly to update, to become in alignment with the state's licensing process and to remove the redundancies for childcare providers. So the state of play here for childcare, I think anyone with kids or who knows someone who has young kids in Denver or anywhere in the country would tell you that childcare, we're in a childcare crisis. And it goes both on the supply and the cost of care for infants and toddlers. The average cost of care in Denver for infants and toddlers. So, anyone who's 0 to 3 years old is right around 20,000 dollars on an annual budget. And I'm looking around the room and I'm seeing some, some faces like that is even far too low for what they're experiencing. But that average is right around 20,000 dollars. Just for some perspective, that's 18 to 25% of a family's annual income. And if you're a single parent, that number jumps up to about 40%. The rate of inflation for childcare has outpaced inflation for most other things and services in our economy. Just from 2020 to 2024, the rate of inflation for childcare was at 29%. Again, just vastly outpacing anybody's ability to keep up with cost. Part of that is because when the pandemic hit, childcare centers were some of the most impacted. But they were also some of the fastest to get online because we knew what the economic impact and economic value was for those centers being open so that parents could go to work. And Colorado is one of the most expensive places for childcare 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. That number is, Denver's about 49% higher than the national average for childcare. So, and this graph on the right shows that we are just not even close to hitting the supply. We have about 31,000 kids that are between that 0 and 3 age range. And we have about 4,000 license slots for those kids. Now, not every family chooses licensed care and that's totally 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, beginning of the year, Mayor Johnson announced his 2026 goals that we were going to take on as a city and 1 of them was the child friendly goal. So, in addition to connecting young people with summer jobs and out of school time programming, which 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, as a part of that effort, is us trying to get our arms around what are the levers that we can pull at the local level to ensure that every Denver family has access to high quality and affordable child care. And that really is what brought this group together is to understand what the supply side challenges were so that we could unlock more availability and more availability faster. So we brought together this group with the express 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 you 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. And we've had tremendous support from our city attorney's office. This group was brought together to understand what the 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. 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 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 3 primary goals was 1, reduce the barriers that providers experience. I will say that the city is has taken a lot of steps in the past to. To make this an easier process specifically for child care providers, and we are continuing to identify what barriers are when they arise. This group is also aimed at streamlining processes for maximum efficiency. when childcare providers sign a lease, but they're having to wait to actually have their first day of classes and their first day of care, that's lost costs and that's not 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. 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. 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. And then those 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. 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. Okay. For kind of a picture of how many licenses we have and what the fee revenue looks like, 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 nine to 25 children and $200 for 26 or more children. Notably, our childcare centers can get their fees waived if they are a nonprofit, and that's pursuant to department rules. And about 60% of our childcare 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 fee. So kind of from a high level, 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 clearinghouse 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 childcare 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 going to 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... 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 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 childcare 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 play 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 ASSTEP 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 a child care provider is typically the lead teacher they are the lead accounting manager they are facilities maintenance 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 helping contribute to the raising of a child. They're tremendous human beings. And so anything that we can do to take one thing off their plate will go a long way, I think. I thought that the quote belonged to the little kid.

It very well could as well. You set that up. Thank you.

I have not yet asked him his opinion on this, but we'll follow up. What it also does is reduce the cost to open a facility. I don't think that the licensing fee, like Abby said, is the kind of thing that makes or breaks a childcare business, but again, taking away things that are unnecessary for those providers to do so that they can focus on the things. I will say, and this is no shade on our friends at the state, because I think they're doing some great work, that licensing fee is a lot more expensive than what we're charging here at the city. So we're not getting, 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 3rd 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 the year 2026 with a lot of this other language. What this doesn't do, however, this does not compromise health and safety in any way. 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 the health and safety of both kids and faculty completely safe throughout this. Now, this doesn't drastically I'm not going to pretend that this also drastically opens the floodgates to providers coming in the door tomorrow to start their childcare business in Denver. It's we're going to take away a couple a couple weeks out of the process, which I think is worthwhile and important again. It's 1 of those things that we don't have to, we shouldn't do it. And then this doesn't this isn't the. the silver bullet to solve the child care supply crisis. This is our first attempt and 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. And so part of this one proposal that we're bringing to you is the first and longer list of actions that we hope will continue to make that a reality. 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 intimately. And they're, again, a tremendous resource of both those networks and also their expertise working in the early childcare field. We held a provider town hall to hear directly from childcare providers themselves. I would be completely honest, it was not super well attended, but I think that that speaks to the fact that this is just a necessary change that will not yield the, this isn't the controversial thing that we could be doing for childcare providers. This is like a yes, please and thank you, do that, has been our experience thus far. And then we've had tremendous conversations and alignment with our colleagues over at the Department of Early Childhood and Colorado Department of Human Services, who also currently have oversight into all these types of licensing systems. In terms of next steps, what we're going to continue to do, and as I alluded to, we're going to 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 child care landscape easier, more high quality, more affordable for everyone involved. And we're going to continue to work with our agency partners. 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, that they allowed OCA to be a part of this and to bring folks to the table to have these conversations. We think that there's a lot of value in that. And so that's even sparked further conversations into broader and more spaces where we can make some, where we can pull levers here at the local level. 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. Yeah, thank you.

Well, thank you so much, Rhett and team. I should have started by saying, at first, actually, let me introduce and welcome Councilmember Perry for joining us. I should have started by saying, when I was a kid, many, many, many, many moons ago, on Saturday morning, there was this TV cartoon called The Wonder Twins. And the Wonder Twins would come together and say, Wonder Twins, connect. And they will connect. There will 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 licensing, you bring together DDPHE and OCA, and all three of you I'm working on something. It is exciting. And so I wanted to thank you all for your good work and that of all the folks on your teams that putting together all your good powers to bring forward such an important piece of an important change. Before we go to City Council Q, we have a public comment section here today this afternoon and we have Moath Vaisho. He's the only person that signed up. I don't see Moath in the audience and I am looking to see if he is possibly virtual. That's question to the producer. I don't see that he is virtual. So the queue for city council members is open and we begin first with council member Cashman and then council member Flynn.

Thank you, committee chair. Thanks for the presentation. 100% supportive. I had a summer 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 thanks for doing this. Great, great, great move. But one clarification I wanted to get. In the presentation, what I thought I heard was that the state is very attentive to health and safety inspections and so on, but you're retaining your right to do health, kind of confused it.

Yeah, it's confusing. And I remember that conversation, Councilman Cashman. I remember that, yes. So we're talking about multiple state agencies here that have oversight. 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 teacher trainings and qualifications. Those are the types of inspections they do. DDPHE does the public health inspection.

So the state's not doing public health?

The state is not, but we do what CDPHE does. So our regulations are the same as CDPHE'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.

So the standards are the same. We're doing the inspections. State health is not. Thank you for the clarification. That's all, Committee Chair. Great question, Councilmember Cashman. Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would 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, somebody providing care in their home, for example. Does the state routinely share their licensing with us? Do we have access to that? Help me understand that.

So, yes, they do share that information with us, although currently 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. So we know that 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 are our recourse tools?

So like I mentioned, we called out specifically DDPHU's authority to enter those spaces as needed under public health authority. So while 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 outbreaks and things like that.

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

Yep. And to add on to that too, so centers, summer camps, and other program preschools, they're all required to have hour 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. 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, I remember an example where they needed to shut down a childcare facility due to an infant fatality, but they had to go through 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 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 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 we came across something egregious, we could also take action against that facility immediately and issue a cease and desist order.

Other than against a state license, we have other mechanisms. Correct. 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 level can be, not always is, but can be much more responsive. Then you know calling the state I would call the city before I call the state right so I'm cautiously supportive Just need to have a comfort level and by the time this gets to council I'll I've done my due diligence on it, so I appreciate it.

Yeah, that's fair.

Sure, those are my concerns.

Thank you, Council Member Flynn. Council Member Cashman?

Yeah, sorry, a couple things came to mind. First of all, why are we so much more expensive in childcare 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 childcare. Um, so I think that that what is challenging for all businesses is challenging for childcare businesses. Um, again, I think we have a recognition that childcare businesses are not like other businesses. There's less of a profit motive. So, again, like Abby said, most of the child care providers in the city are nonprofits, and they are trying to provide care at a low cost of 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. I think it's there are challenges for businesses across the city. I think having some of these maybe not as necessary regulations is a challenge, and that's why we started down this path. So I wouldn't give too much of a business analytical answer. That's definitely getting outside of my lane. But I would just say that childcare businesses have some of the same struggles and then some other considerations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not the only expensive city 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 in one of your earlier slides, you showed we've got a population about 31,000, and we've got about 4,000 slots available. How does that compare with other cities? Any idea? Yeah, so that...

For the zero to three, we're probably pretty close to on par with some peer cities. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, again, nationally, this is a crisis like Denver's. As much as I think we're special in this regard, we are not special and unique. 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 in different ways, and some places are getting more creative. I'm sure you're familiar with New Mexico just has built out their early child care 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. Some San Antonio, I was just reading it has a really robust 0 to 5 pipeline. They have some different considerations that may be darn is relevant to our context. New York is obviously in the news a lot. We don't have the same number of establishments that we can point to to tax at that rate. So. There are a lot of places grappling with this and trying to do some different things to figure out what works in their context. And so this is definitely part of what we're figuring out now too.

Do we have any idea how many 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 care don't have it are you talking about like um summer programs like summer camps and Yeah, they're not going to summer camp. They don't have an in-house care provider. They're just left at home while their parents are at work.

I don't know that I 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'll have about 28,000 kids in programming. 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 of the napkin math on the fly here. I would say it's a substantial number of kids that are in programs, and it's also a substantial number that are not in any informal. To the extent that they're in some non-supported or some other non-supportive care 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 OCA and the rest of you for what you are doing. Thank you.

That's all, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Cashman. I have a quick question, and you may not have this. I didn't ask this during my briefing. We've seen across the country lower birth rates, lower percentages of families having kids, having at a later age. Has there been any forecasting on that impact on that kind of that spread? that difference in amount of children that's needing support for childcare, etc. Has anyone done any kind of diagnosis on that and the 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 and I know the Denver preschool program is. I think their data team is pretty 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 get that. I also know that we've had some conversations with our city economists 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 the one-year cycle. So that's a great question and something that we think about because we see the trends that everyone sees and that DPS is feeling declining enrollment. Again, Denver's an expensive city to live in, so places outside of the city are becoming a hub for children. I know this is something that Denver Preschool Program pointed out, that there are actually families moving into Denver for preschool because we have a better investment for three- and four-year-olds than other places do. But again, there's still a gap, and 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, Rhett. I want to look around the room and then check online to see if there are any additional questions. I do see Councilmember Perry. If you'd like to join the queue, I'll turn over the 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, that the costs are just pretty unbelievable. I've told people this before, but even with two kids in public school, one who's in ECE and my family doesn't qualify for a sliding scale, so we pay for that. But one who's fully in DPS, just the aftercare alone, being a council member, takes more than half my council salary. So it I don't really know how other parents are surviving. I know 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 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 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. And then when I started asking around as a new council member, I was actually pretty surprised how much of this was really about building code and all of that and just the spaces that centers can operate in, because I hadn't expected that. It was 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 so that I can ensure that I'm doing all the things. But it feels a little like COVID because I'm managing a lot of things all in my house at the same time, and it is not easy. So I just want to say thank you. I want to acknowledge this work. I'm very supportive of it. I am a yes on moving it forward to the floor, but just you know, want to flag. We're talking about early childhood education here, but there is a whole spectrum of kids who are running around Farrell, including my teenagers at this moment this summer. And so, you know, there's more work to be done. And I do think Council Member Rapparty really flagged some of the other changes. I hope this is step one of a kind of multi-step fix. So just wanted to say that. Really appreciate it and supportive of this to move it to the floor. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawyer, and thank you so much, Council Member Parity, both for joining virtually. One more call around the room to see if there's anyone else. A quick comment. We have one of those feral children right here in chambers, actually, in the council office. Towns is running around. I don't know if the camera can get to him. I know it's dad. He's my council aide. I would love to get him into daycare. Just kidding. He's going to be going to camp in a few weeks. But we do love the barrel instead of running around the city council every now and then. This is an action item. I'm just looking to see if this needs to be motioned by Councilmember Flynn. Second by... Do we have a second? Voting members? You a voting member, Cashman? I wish that I was. I'm just riff-raff.

I can second. Yep, I can second as well.

So moved by Flynn. Seconded, I heard, from Parity First. 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, the meeting is adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Great meeting.