Luverne City Council members took action at their Feb. 8 meeting to request state bonding funds to equip and furnish the building they recently purchased for a child care center.
The estimate for renovating the former Total Card Inc. building into a space for 186 slots for child care is estimated to be $2.83 million.
The renovation and the purchase price of the 30,000-square-foot building ($515,000) brings the total cost to $3.3 million.
The state of Minnesota bonding bill funds worthy projects up to 50 percent of the cost of the project, with the other 50 percent local matching funds.
The total request for state bonding is $1,672,781, which will cover 50 percent of the project.
The city will raise the matching funds through other sources such as working with Rock County, other governmental sources, non-profit entities and private fundraising.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Pat Baustian said he’s meeting with Rep. Joe Schomacker and Sen. Bill Weber to work on final language for bills in the House and Senate, and city clerk Jessica Mead is working with Gov. Tim Walz’s policy adviser for the bonding bill request.
“We’ll be monitoring this closely, but after tonight we’ll be ready to get the information to them,” Baustian said.
“I think everybody here has been involved in the lack of child care and seeing its demise over the past five years.”
In 2016 there were 51 child care providers in Rock County. Today there are 24, with additional retirements pending.
“Day care is important for economic vitality in communities, and we’re taking the right steps to start the process of rebuilding our day care,” Baustian said. “It’s a good time to do it with our (state) budget surplus.”
While the city works on financing over the next several months, the non-profit child care board will focus on planning and operation of the center.
Members of the non-profit board include president Merlin Cleveringa, vice president Greg Burger, secretary Holly Sammons, treasurer Emily Crabtree, Tammy Loosbrock, Jason Phelps and Timothy Connell.
Background
After years of studying child care business models, city leaders and staff have discovered the working parents’ wages aren’t enough to support the costs of owning and maintaining a building while at the same time affording salaries of professional child care staff.
For this reason and many others, the city of Luverne has chosen to help facilitate the creation of a local child care center.
The city intends to own the building and lease it to a non-profit entity that will run child care center operations.
Young families, new residents and local businesses are feeling the pinch from the lack of availability of child care.
It is an economic issue that is hindering businesses from attracting and retaining employees.
In addition, many working parents are choosing to live closer to Brandon and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where they can find more day care options.
To illustrate the trending problem, there were 56 licensed child care providers in Rock County in 2016 compared with 24 now.
Ten in-home child care providers in Rock County left the profession in the past year, leaving roughly 120 children needing care elsewhere, in addition to nearly 200 slots already needed locally.
This creates a rapidly widening gap between working families who need child care and the available slots with licensed providers, which creates stifled economic growth.
When parents are not able to find child care, they are not able to work, which causes a shortage of employees for businesses and limits what a community is able to do to recruit new businesses and industry.
Project timeline
Spring 2022: Predesign
Summer 2022: Engineering plans and specs
Fall 2022: Advertise project.
Winter 2022: Begin construction.
Spring 2023: Substantial completion.
Spring – Summer 2023: Open child care center.