A week after dozens of parents urged Salt Lake County Council members to reconsider a proposal to eliminate four county-run child care facilities in the Salt Lake Valley, the panel wants to postpone the closures.
The council voted 5-4 along party lines Oct. 28 to signal its intent to shutter the facilities by the end of the year in Magna, Kearns, Millcreek and Salt Lake City’s Fairpark neighborhood, with Republicans voting for the closures.
In a special meeting Monday, the Republican majority voted in a 5-3 party-line vote to fund the facilities through May 31 and make families pay a 20% tuition increase starting in January. Democratic council member Jiro Johnson did not vote due to technical difficulties.
“I believe that it’s really important for us to give these families some additional time to find alternative arrangements for their child care,” Republican council member Aimee Winder Newton said, “and it makes sense to have it go until the end of the school year.”
Council member Suzanne Harrison, a Democrat who proposed a similar measure when the council first decided to close the centers, said she voted against the motion to keep the facilities open through May out of protest because the county hasn’t gone through a “good process” to figure out fiscally sustainable solutions to keep the programs open longer.
Democratic council member Natalie Pinkney added that she also voted “no” since the motion would ultimately close the discounted day cares.
Council Chair Dea Theodore, a Republican who voted to for the temporary additional funding, said the closures are part of an effort to cut down costs as the mayor proposes a 20% tax increase, and are the result of “some failures on the administration by letting it get to this point.”
For her part, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said in a statement that the county should have “taken the time necessary to make these child care programs viable for the long term.”
“Salt Lake County has a history of offering affordable, accessible programs for children, families, individuals, and seniors,” Wilson added. “I will continue to work to ensure that this mission is not compromised at Salt Lake County.”
Keeping staff in place
Winder Newton, who also leads the state’s Office of Families and serves as a senior adviser to Gov. Spencer Cox, previously told The Salt Lake Tribune that providing a stopgap for the programs to stay open longer could be problematic to retaining employees in the meantime. To prevent this issue, the council also signaled its support in a unanimous vote Monday to create an incentive program to keep the facilities staffed through May.
The day cares serve 271 families during the school year and upward of 300 during the summer for kids ages 2-12, according to the county. The existing program costs families $460 a month per child for kids ages 2-4, and about $290 a month per child for kids 5-12.
That’s about half of what non-county facilities charge, according to a study conducted by the Pathway Group, a consulting firm contracted by Salt Lake County.
According to that study, low revenue from discounted fees and high operational costs led the county to shell out more than $7,000 in subsidies to each family in the program.
The council voted to shutter the facilities in its Oct. 28 meeting so officials could send out notices of the impending closures to affected families. New notices with the May 31 closure date were set to go out Monday, council member Laurie Stringham said.
Stringham and council member Carlos Moreno, both Republicans, said they plan to look at options for the county to take private donations to help affected families “get a soft landing wherever they need to go. ”
‘Too little, too late’
For West Valley City resident Megan Harthun, the council’s reprieve is “too little, too late,” she said. Harthun has an 8-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter who attend the child care program at the Kearns Recreation Center.
Her children also attend school in Kearns, and the family moved districts just to find child care that also transports the kids to and from a good school, Harthun said.
After the initial closure announcement, Harthun paid a $200 deposit to secure her kids a spot in a new program, since they would’ve had to change schools or her husband would’ve had to quit his job if they lost child care.
“There’s not a single family that I’ve heard that thinks things need to stay the way they are,” Harthun said. “The anger is over the way it was done, and that there’s so many easy solutions that no one fixed two years ago.”
The final decision on closing the day care facilities won’t come until next month, when the council finalizes the county’s 2026 budget.