Dear Mayor Aliano and Vice Mayor Hoffmeister,

Concord has nearly 90 home-based child care providers, and they all deserve serious consideration for grants through Concord’s American Rescue Plan Act funds. These workers and their small businesses provide critical support to Concord’s families, and they have fallen through bureaucratic cracks in pandemic support grants.

Concord’s in-home childcare providers were significantly impacted by the Covid-19 shutdowns, sheltering in place orders, and pandemic restrictions. They are still in recovery mode and many will likely be dealing with bills and debts incurred from lost income and increased pandemic expenses (cleaning supplies, masks, test kits, etc).

Although they are not typical brick-and-mortar shops, they are still small businesses and have also invested blood, sweat, and tears in the commitment to own and operate an in-home childcare business. The clients that they serve are Concord residents, Concord families.

Here’s what many may not know: Two weeks into the pandemic, on April 28, 2020, Concord child care providers received a message that “Because of the recent changes to State of California law, specifically SB 234, which newly exempts home-based large family daycare from the requirement of local business license requirements, we are asking you to close your account online. You are no longer required to maintain a City of Concord Business License.” SB 234 was passed in September 2019 and went into effect on January 1, 2020.

Up until 2020, these in-home daycare providers were required to hold business licenses and pay fees as such. It’s likely that with the enactment of SB234 many in-home daycare providers in our city were victims of a double whammy. Not only were they severely impacted by stay-at-home orders, child care center shutdowns, and Covid-19 restrictions, but they also fell through the cracks when only small businesses that held business licenses in our city were being offered grants and funding to help them weather the pandemic.

They were asked to close their small business licensing accounts just as the pandemic was beginning and were not included in grants to small businesses in Concord; some of those grants were as much as $5000.00

Child care workers - and their small businesses - are a critical part of the support network for Concord’s working families. They have supported us for many years. Now it is time that we support them. Please find ways to allocate ARPA funds to Concord’s child care workers.

My pledge as a candidate and city council member is that I will be transparent, accountable, and open to hearing different perspectives. What do you think? Join the conversation with my campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

Hear Laura's comment on this subject at the June 28th City Council meeting: