Keeping S.L. County-run day cares open would cost taxpayers a cup of coffee a year. It’s too pricey for GOP council members.

Eliminating four Salt Lake County-run day cares will force more than 250 families to find other arrangements in a state that already has a shortage of licensed providers.

The benefit? The average Salt Lake County homeowner will save 23 cents a month on next year’s property tax bill.

It’s a decision that Salt Lake County Council Republicans have embraced in party-line votes that sought to cut spending after Mayor Jenny Wilson proposed a 20% property tax hike to cover public safety investments and rising operational costs across the county.

After initially voting to close the centers in Magna, Kearns, Millcreek and Salt Lake City by year’s end, the Republican caucus, facing pressure from parents, relented this month and delayed shuttering the day cares until the end of May, while raising tuition by 20%.

“We have no extra money,” said Jessica Earl, whose 2-year-old son attends the Millcreek Activity Center for child care. “Even that 20% that they’re raising our prices for blows my mind. ...We’re already struggling, and we’re going to have to find other child care.”

The day care closures have galvanized a coalition of families who face steep cost increases — if they can find another day care spot. The county-run centers are about half the cost of other day cares, and in Utah’s most populous county, tens of thousands of kids who need care can’t get it at a licensed provider.

Nearly 75 families who use the programs have joined together to push back against the planned closures, with Earl running an Instagram account for the campaign called Utah Works for Families. The fight has “already made a difference,” Earl said, but it is draining.

“We are just exhausted and tired,” she said, “because we have full-time jobs. We have families.”

Republican council members, meanwhile, remain steadfast in their goal to cut the programs entirely.

“We’ve been getting hit so hard with this, but here’s the reality of it: If the mayor loved this program so much, why wasn’t she taking care of it? Why wasn’t her staff taking care of it?” council Chair Dea Theodore said. “I’m sorry, but they let it fail, and we got to this point where we’re having to make this hard decision and now we’re getting heat for it, which really stinks.”

What’s driving the closures?

Council members on both sides of the aisle agreed the day cares were financially unsustainable, but Democrats urged the county to find a partnership or alternative care for families before eliminating the centers.

Republicans, however, cited the $2 million subsidy the county paid in 2024 to keep the facilities running amid high operational costs and low revenue as a major reason for voting to close the facilities. Parents pay anywhere from $290 to $460 a child, depending on age, leaving the county to pay about $7,400 per family.

It’s not fair, Republicans contend, for all Salt Lake County taxpayers — including those who have made sacrifices for child care — to subsidize programs for so few families.

GOP council members also said most families would get state assistance to go elsewhere with minimal additional cost, so the county doesn’t need to operate day care programs.

In an Oct. 28 meeting, the Pathway Group, a consulting firm contracted by the county to study the child care programs, told council members that 84% of families who use the county-run day cares receive state funding that could be used at another facility.

That, however, proved wrong.

Instead, 17% — fewer than 50 families — currently receive that subsidy, a Pathway Group consultant later said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Even if parents do qualify, according to the state Department of Workforce Services, they may be stuck with co-pays and additional out-of-pocket costs for whatever the funding doesn’t cover.

Asked about the lower percentage of families who would qualify for aid, Republican council member Laurie Stringham said it doesn’t affect her decision to close the centers.

“We’re in there day in and day [out], trying to figure out where to cut in the budget so we don’t have a 20% tax increase,” Stringham said. “... And there are so many people who can’t afford that… But keep[ing] a program for just a handful of families where it hurts so many others, that makes no sense.”

In a Nov. 18 council meeting, Wilson, who has advocated for making the programs viable in the long term, said there have been “soft expressions” from philanthropists and charitable foundations to help the county pay for things like day cares while officials figure out a path to sustainability. But these partnerships take time to figure out, she added, and the nature of the county budget process — which needs to be completed in December — “makes time kind of tricky.”

To keep the day cares afloat, Wilson’s proposed 2026 budget would have raised tuition rates, bringing the county’s costs from $2 million to $1.56 million. This would leave the average homeowner across the county to chip in about 23 cents a month — or less than $3 a year.

Stringham countered that when every county program or department costs taxpayers around the same amount as a cup of coffee, those numbers add up.

“It isn’t one entity,” Stringham said. “It isn’t just one thing. And we’ve got to rein in all of the government entities.”

Theodore, the council chair, agreed, arguing that although 23 cents a month may seem like a small amount for some, for others — like seniors on fixed incomes — “it’s a really huge amount, because they just can’t take any kind of increase.” (After voting to shutter the day cares, GOP council members also voted to close a county senior center.)

Republican council members have also argued the county simply shouldn’t be in the child care business and that there are other places to go.

Still, studies show — and most young parents know — that day care spots can be hard to come by.

Child care in short supply

A 2023 study conducted by Voices for Utah Children — in partnership with the Utah Office of Child Care, the Utah Afterschool Network and the state Board of Education — found there were more than 57,000 children in Salt Lake County under age 6 potentially in need of care. Yet fewer than 25,500 spots were available at licensed child care facilities in the county.

All four Salt Lake County facilities are licensed. Unlicensed child care — which is not subject to health and safety standards or regular inspections from the state — does exist. Limited data is available on how many unlicensed programs operate in the state, but a document uploaded to the Legislature’s website estimates there are at least 1,500 providers.

Unlicensed programs are also unable to access the state’s child care subsidy funds.

“Child care is a public good and should be regarded as such by policymakers and elected officials,” the Voices for Utah Children study states. “As a community, children’s health and safety — as well as their foundational learning and development — should be our top priority.”

Earl, the mom who runs the Instagram account for the coalition of families, makes slightly too much money to qualify for state child care assistance but still relies on the low cost of the county-run centers to make her budget work.

“My son loves it; the teacher is amazing,” Earl said. “... These are high-quality centers. It’s not like a home day care that is super sketchy. … I really don’t believe we’ll be able to find anything like this, price-wise, quality-wise.”

According to the 2023 study, center-based care for an infant or toddler in Salt Lake County costs about $936 a month, and for preschoolers, tuition is about $707 a month.

Parent Mackenzie Miller said many families travel from outside the area to access the centers, with some driving from Davis and Utah counties, because the Salt Lake County facilities offer

high-quality programs with low fees.

Miller’s 3-year-old daughter attends the county’s program in Magna, where his 5-year-old daughter was also enrolled before she entered kindergarten. The girls previously attended an in-home day care in South Jordan, but the program wasn’t as good, Miller said, and was still more expensive than what the county offers.

Shuttering the county-run centers, he added, is shortsighted.

“It’s going to hurt a lot more than the [money] that they’re allegedly saving,” Miller said. “It’s going to hurt 271 families right now, but it’s also going to hurt families to come or people that want to have kids later.”

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