Funds from the recently passed New York state budget will allow Onondaga County to end a waitlist for working families looking for affordable child care.
Nearly 500 families have been on the waitlist for a year for a county program that pays the bulk of childcare costs for families who meet income guidelines. County Executive Ryan McMahon said thanks to an allocation of 55 million dollars in the recently passed state budget, the waitlist is ending.
"It’s good news for those families," McMahon said. "Certainly, it’s needed support and will allow the families to get in to the daycare they worked with."
McMahon said the funds come on top of tens of millions of dollars the county has poured into the childcare system, creating new daycare slots and affordability measures over the last five years. Looking forward, he expects says it’s an opportunity for child care businesses to grow.
"We will need more child care providers to invest and expand or to come into the marketplace, we know that," he said. "But this childcare subsidy obviously makes it easy for working families to be able to pay for childcare so they can go to work. That’s what this program is for."
County planners estimate an additional 8,000-9,000 children will be part of a population influx caused by the Micron project. McMahon notes that matches the decline of school aged children in recent years.
