Day Care Subsidies
From the Fargo Forum:
I think the point of this issue is being missed. A daycare is a business like any other. Businesses survive when there is a market for them. Obviously there isn't enough of a market for childcare in the Fargo area to allow these centers to remain open.
I do not support subsidies for any type of business. If a business can't turn a profit on its own, why should the government make up the difference? Trying to turn this into a childhood issue is ludicrous. These daycare centers aren't responsible for raising our children, we as parents are. The bellyaching you're hearing is coming mostly from the owners of the daycares who have been cut off from the government gravy train.
The closing of these daycares isn't a problem. If there truly is such a shortage of daycare providers in the Fargo area, some enterprising person will come along and open a center to turn a profit. Judging from the fact that these centers can't remain open without government assistance, I would submit that there isn't enough of a market to go around.
Daily Discoveries Learning Center and Imagination Station in Moorhead will welcome kids for the last time today.
The two centers served about 130 area children.
Lakes and Prairies Community Action Partnership couldn’t afford to keep the centers open, a decision that was sealed last month when the Clay County Commission voted 3-2 not to provide a second rent break.
Reductions in state funding made it impossible for Lakes and Prairies to continue subsidizing the two nonprofit day-care centers, said executive director Joe Pederson.
“I think it is a statement of the climate out there today,” he said. “We would rather talk about football stadiums and baseball stadiums. I haven’t seen anyone want to invest that kind of energy on early childhood issues. The one issue that probably will have the biggest impact down the road doesn’t get any attention.”
Pederson and Paul Finstad, executive director of the YMCA, tried to broker a deal that would have kept the centers open.
I think the point of this issue is being missed. A daycare is a business like any other. Businesses survive when there is a market for them. Obviously there isn't enough of a market for childcare in the Fargo area to allow these centers to remain open.
I do not support subsidies for any type of business. If a business can't turn a profit on its own, why should the government make up the difference? Trying to turn this into a childhood issue is ludicrous. These daycare centers aren't responsible for raising our children, we as parents are. The bellyaching you're hearing is coming mostly from the owners of the daycares who have been cut off from the government gravy train.
The closing of these daycares isn't a problem. If there truly is such a shortage of daycare providers in the Fargo area, some enterprising person will come along and open a center to turn a profit. Judging from the fact that these centers can't remain open without government assistance, I would submit that there isn't enough of a market to go around.
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