Child Care Capital Needs and Future

Funding Strategies

The Policy and Finance Committee recommends:

(1)the adoption of the joint report (July 14, 1999) from the Commissioner of Community and Neighbourhood Services and the Commissioner of Urban Planning and Development Services;

(2)that the Mayor, together with the City's Children Advocate and other interested Councillors, request a meeting with the Provincial Government (Minister of Community and Social Services and/or the Premier's office) to discuss the urgency of Provincial Government funding for child care capital needs;

(3)that a copy of the Commissioner's report be sent to the Children and Youth Action Committee for its information and comment; and

(4)the Commissioner of Community and Neighbourhood Services be requested to submit a report in the fall of 1999, on the development of a five to ten year childcare Capital Program and its funding sources.

The Policy and Finance Committee also submits the following joint report (July 14, 1999) from the Commissioner of Community and Neighbourhood Services and Commissioner of Urban Planning and Development Services:

Purpose:

This report identifies the need for major and minor capital funding support to preserve the existing stock of licensed child care and to expand child care services to meet the growing unmet demand. In addition, the historic roles and funding strategies of the Province of Ontario, and the seven former municipalities will be described. This will provide the context for Council's future consideration of optional capital funding strategies.

Funding Sources, Financial Implications and Impact Statement:

No additional City funds are being requested at this point in time. Details of the approved capital support for licensed care facilities are outlined in this report.

Recommendations:

It is recommended that:

(1)the Commissioner of Community and Neighbourhood Services provide more detail on the capital development costs of child care programs impacted by school site closures in the year 2000 following the current public consultation and imminent School Board decisions on specific sites to be closed;

(2)City Officials undertake a more comprehensive review of capital financing strategies employed in other municipal jurisdictions across Ontario and the rest of Canada to support major and minor capital needs in child care and report further to Council;

(3)City Officials seek provincial approval to use any unspent child care fee subsidy allocation on the minor capital needs of child care programs serving subsidized families and develop criteria to guide the distribution of funds approved for this purpose;

(4)approval be given for the ongoing contribution of any surplus user revenue raised from families using subsidized child care to the Child Care Capital Reserve; and

(5)the Children's Services Division be directed to reflect child care development needs in its multi-year business plan.

Council Reference/Background/History:

The Children and Youth Action Committee, at its May 28, 1999 meeting discussed the impending child care capital needs and possible funding strategies to support them. A joint report from the Commissioner of Community and Neighbourhood Services and the Commissioner of Urban Planning and Development Services was requested to outline child care capital needs and to propose possible mechanisms which could be used to fund these needs. Specifically, that motion requested details concerning the immediate funding needs of child care centres that will have to be relocated because of impending school closings; ongoing major and minor capital dollars needed; funding options including property tax contribution, section 37 provisions and development charges. This report provides the information requested.

While work on this report was underway, pressures continued to mount within certain sectors of the child care community. Two related reports, both dated June 1, 1999 entitled "Capital Funding Support for Pelmo Park Child Care Centre" and "Capital Loan Guarantee for Earl Haig Community Day Care Centre to Develop a Child Care Centre" were considered at Community Services Committee on June 17, 1999 and at Policy and Finance Committee on June 23, 1999. The Pelmo Park report requests a revision to the revised relocation and renovation costs being encountered moving the program from its school location to its new service site. The Earl Haig report contains a request for another loan guarantee by the City to allow the development of a new child care centre. Ultimately, the continued use of the Child Care Capital Reserve and the loan guarantee approach must be rationalized in an overall City policy with respect to child care capital development.

Comments and/or Discussion and/or Justification:

(1)Existing City Capital Funding Sources for Licensed Child Care

There is approximately $900 thousand in unallocated funds currently in the child care capital reserve established to finance the relocation and renovation costs associated with child care centres forced to vacate school premises. Twelve capital projects, for a total of $4.275 million are in various stages of completion. In addition, the City has outstanding liabilities of approximately $1.740 million associated with five loan guarantees for child care centres. As a result of development agreements secured through Section 37 of the Planning Act with Sam-Sor Enterprises and Imperial Oil Ltd., $2 million plus land have been secured toward a new child care centre in the North York Centre. Finally, within the City's five-year capital forecast, there is a child care component within a multi-service community centre planned for 495 Sherbourne Street. At this time, the capital funds associated with the child care component are contained within the $10 million recreation complex plans.

(2)Factors Contributing to Growing Child Care Capital Need

(a)Unmet Service Demand

Historically, the availability of licensed child care services and the fee subsidies needed to assure access to them by low income families has not kept pace with the need or demand. The current licensed stock of service, which currently has only 2,000 vacancies, clearly is insufficient to meet this need.

Similarly, there is a demonstrated need for additional fee subsidies to assist families who are unable to pay full fee. While the City currently has sufficient fee subsidy to provide subsidized child care service to 24, 216 children, this is not enough to meet the demand. There are approximately 12,000 children on the waiting list for regular fee subsidies.

The unmet service demand is particularly worrisome in the mandatory Ontario Works Program. Child care is acknowledged to be critical for clients with a mandatory participation requirement; and meeting negotiated Ontario Works participation targets is critical to the outcome based provincial funding associated with this initiative. Currently, there are over 3,300 Ontario Works families on the Ontario Works child care subsidy waiting list. At maturity, the Community and Neighbourhood Services Department estimates that 21,000 additional child care fee subsidies will be needed to support the Ontario Works program.

The Provincial Operational Review of Ontario Works and Subsidized Child Care considered strategies required to expand the stock of child care service options for participating families. Even assuming that there will be a continued mix of informal and formal forms of care chosen by Ontario Works families, the future Ontario Works child care needs can not be met without some level of child care capital development. An estimate of the capital costs associated with even a modest level of licensed group care growth to meet Ontario Works program demands is $150 million. This estimate assumes that in future, the child care needs of about half of the Ontario Works families could be met through non-licensed care options. Meeting the licensed care needs of the remainder would require the building of an additional 10,000 spaces at an average cost of up to $15,000.00 per space.

Another problem is that the access to both licensed and subsidized child care is not equitably spread across the geography of the city nor across the age groups of the children requiring the care. The City's Service Plan for Child Care, originally approved by the former Metropolitan Toronto Council in 1993, clearly shows that there are a number of wards (17, 10, 2, 19 and 20) that are at least 15 per cent below their service equity targets. The age equity data within the Service Plan shows that the availability of licensed care options for infants and toddlers is also below its equity target.

A very modest capital development plan which would ensure that no City ward is more than 10 per cent underserved according to the current Service Plan for child care would require the strategically placed construction of at least 10-11 new child care centres adding a total of approximately 700 new licensed spaces. The cost of even such a modest development plan would be minimally $10.3 million.

The pressure for more infant and toddler spaces in particular, can be expected to increase with the implementation of the Learning, Earning and Parenting Program (LEAP) component of Ontario Works, by year-end. There are insufficient licensed spaces for the youngest aged children to meet the mandatory child care service requirements associated with LEAP, a program that requires teen parents, aged 16 and 17 to stay in school to remain eligible for their benefits under Ontario Works. A service demand for up to 2,000 additional infant and toddler spaces may be expected at program maturity. The capital development costs associated with building these spaces would be as high as $33 million.

The pressure to expand the current licensed stock of child care services to meet unmet service demands will increase as a result of provincial initiatives such as Ontario Works, LEAP, Health Babies/Healthy Children, and the Speech and Language Initiative. All of these provincial initiatives include the expectation of child care support as a mandatory or preferred aspect of their program design.

(b)School Closures

As a result of the new provincial education funding formula, school boards in Toronto were required to review their accommodation needs in the year 2000 and beyond. The Toronto District School Board has identified the need to close up to thirty of its schools over the next three years to reduce its surplus capacity. Phase 1 of its plan calls for the closure of a maximum of ten schools by September 2000. Five of these ten schools contain child care centres. The Board is currently engaged in an Area Review Committee process to study the community impact of the closure of the first ten schools. The results of this review process were reported at the end of June but final decisions have been deferred. The Toronto Catholic School Board had identified the need to close up to five schools containing child care programs by the year 2000 but the Board has also deferred this decision.

Not only will child care service to families using the centres located in the closing schools be affected, but also there will be a domino effect. Students displaced from the closed schools will be enrolled in adjacent schools which also contain child care programs. To make room for the swelling enrolment, these child care centres will also face displacement. There are eleven additional child care centres which are likely to be displaced in this way.

If the twenty-one child care centres being displaced as a direct or indirect result of school closures were not relocated elsewhere, licensed care for approximately 1,000 children would be lost. More than half of the child care children being displaced are younger than school age. While it may be possible to negotiate shared use of school space to serve some of the school aged children being displaced, this is not a service option for infants, toddlers and preschoolers; and increasingly schools are reluctant to allow the shared use of their classroom space with child care programs. A conservative estimate of the capital costs associated with relocating care for the youngest children expected to be displaced by school closures in year 2000 is $6.2 million. This estimate assumes a per space relocation and renovation cost of $12.3 thousand To meet the child care need created by the full three-year phased closure of schools, a total of $36.9 million in child care capital support would be needed.

School closures are not the only reason that existing child care space in schools may be lost. Each year, because of changing school enrolment patterns, a number of child care centres are forced to relocate. Already this year, with sometimes as little as a few weeks notice, a number of child care centres including Graydon Hall, Mason Road, McCauley and Braeburn Woods have been asked to leave portions or all of school premises.

The current Child Care Capital Reserve is insufficient to address the combined impact of forced relocations of child care centres as a result of school closures and changing school enrolment patterns. The Child Care Capital Reserve which was originally established as an emergency response to a handful of child care centres whose future was threatened first by school renovations and later by school closures now has approximately $900.0 thousand unallocated funds. Based on experience to date individual centres have received anywhere from $25.0 thousand to $650.0 thousand worth of assistance from this reserve. Unless additional funds are added to the Child Care Capital Reserve, it will cease to be a useful tool to assist centres in crisis. This report recommends investing any surplus user revenue from the fee subsidy program in the Child Care Capital Reserve.

(c)Physical Accessibility

Increasingly, child care programs are seeking to be more inclusive in their admission practices striving to integrate to the fullest degree possible children and families facing a variety of special challenges. In some cases, the special needs of the children or families served require a barrier free service environment to accommodate wheelchairs and other prosthetic devices and equipment. Ideally, all child care facilities should be barrier free. But a 1990 assessment of a structured sample of child care settings in what was then Metropolitan Toronto found that no centre in the sample was barrier free. The majority of centres lacked accessible parking and drop-off areas. Centres located above ground level frequently did not have ramps or elevators to facilitate access. Washrooms were the primary area found in need of adaptation. Playrooms were generally found to be the most accessible while playground redesign offered the greatest challenge. Estimates (in 1990 dollars) for retrofitting the centres assessed as part of the sample reflected the wide variety of barriers encountered and ranged from low of $2.8 thousand in a centre with few barriers to $140.8 thousand where the physical layout of the building significantly limits access. While the range of estimated costs was wide, the median estimated cost was approximately $30.0 thousand per centre.

Even a conservative estimate of the capital costs associated with retrofitting the child care centres serving subsidized clients could be as high as $15 million. Currently, there is no provision in the Children's Services budget or business plan to undertake this important work even on an incremental basis.

(d)Relicensing to Serve Younger-aged children

To address the unmet need for licensed care for younger aged children and to improve their centre's own financial viability, some operators have undertaken on site renovations to include or expand infant care within their licensed capacity. Based on the City's directly operated child care centres' renovation experience, it is estimated that the renovation cost to existing licensed space to serve infants is likely to be approximately $7,500.00 per infant space created. Without some publicly funded capital program, most existing child care operators would not be able to undertake the renovations required to serve younger aged children in their programs.

(e)New Commercial, Residential or Social Housing

New commercial, residential or social housing initiatives will also to generate a need for child care services. This will add further pressure on the already unmet need for licensed and subsidized child care service. While larger scale developments may provide opportunities to secure new facilities, such as the Railway Lands, smaller incremental developments may prove more difficult to service. The Official Plan will address the need for social infrastructure within new communities to ensure balanced growth.

(f)Minor Capital Needs

In addition to funding required to develop new child care programs or relocate existing child care programs, many child care operations require funding assistance with their minor capital needs. (Minor capital is defined as capital and equipment expenditures of $40.0 thousand and less.) Toronto's long history of encouraging the development of licensed child care centres has resulted in comparatively older facilities than newer communities throughout the Province. As a result, costs associated with maintenance and repair tend to be higher.

Many of the City's older centres require capital upgrades to comply with provincial regulatory statutes. Operators are facing unanticipated expenses associated with health and safety related work that is required to preserve their clear license to operate. Most recently, operators have been faced with the need to refurbish or replace playground structures to meet "the general policy directive" of the Ministry of Community and Social Services to incrementally bring all child care playgrounds into conformity with the new Canadian Standards Association standards. No special funds have been identified or approved for this purpose.

Constraints on operating funding preclude operators from incorporating their minor capital needs in their annual operating budgets. Per diems paid on behalf of needs tested families have not been increased since 1993 and no longer reflect the real cost of providing the service on a day to day basis. They are clearly insufficient to allow operators to finance preventative maintenance programs.

Historically, the Province distributed any unspent fee subsidy to assist operators with minor capital expenses, particularly those related to licensing concerns or health and safety requirements. The amounts available for redistribution as minor capital varied year to year with individual child care sites receiving varying allocations ($10.0 thousand - $25.0 thousand) depending upon the problem being addressed. Since the City is assuming the full role of service system manager for child care as part of the July 1, 1999 download of new programs, it will be important to continue a minor capital program. At least $1 million in minor capital should be made available to address ongoing health, safety and licensing concerns in child care programs under service contract with the City. This report recommends seeking provincial approval to use any unspent fee subsidy dollars for this purpose.

(g)Cancellation of Provincial Capital Grant Program

While there is clear pressure and need to grow the stock of licensed child care available, this is difficult to do without a comprehensive secure capital funding program. Between 1971 and 1995 the provincial government played a major role in capital funding. Originally, the capital program administered by the Ministry of Community and Social Service funded 100 per cent of the capital costs for municipal and non-profit child care programs. Many community-based non-profit child care centres, as well as some of the City's own directly operated facilities (e.g. Albion, Birchmount and Danforth) were funded as part of "Project Day Care" which operated during 1971 and 1972. Thereafter, capital cost sharing was instituted with maximum provincial contribution not exceeding 80 per cent of actual costs. As an example, the municipally operated child care program, Capri was funded with an 80 per cent provincial capital grant in 1986. Later directly operated child care centres at Centenary and Lakeshore Homes for the Aged were developed with 50 per cent provincial capital financing. Most recently, renovations to Jesse Ketchum Child Care Centre and the development of Malvern Child Care Centre were completed in 1997 with 100 per cent provincial capital money from the jobsOntario capital program.

In addition to the capital program operated under the Ministry of Community and Social Services, there was also a "Child Care in New Schools" capital program operated out of the Ministry of Education and Training. All child care capital grant funding for child care was frozen in June of 1995 and subsequently eliminated in 1996 with the release of a child care reform discussion paper. The 1998 provincial budget contained expectations that capital development of child care in the future would be financed by the corporate sector.

While the Province has not had a major capital funding role since 1996 up until July 1, 1999 it has continued to provide minor capital funding to licensed child care programs by redistributing any unspent fee subsidy allocation at the end of each fiscal year. With the transfer of service system management responsibility to the City effective July 1, 1999, the future of this minor capital funding strategy remains uncertain. With provincial permission, the City would like to continue the past provincial practice of redistributing any unspent fee subsidy allocation as a minor capital program.

(3)Existing City Capital Programs

The City has a number of mechanisms which have been used to address child care capital development needs. Even taken collectively, they are insufficient to maintain the current stock of licensed service facing dislocation from school settings or to address the continuing need for expansion of both licensed stock and subsidized care. The mechanisms that have been used or are still in use to address capital development needs include the following: the build to lease program, the loan guarantee program, the child care capital reserve and Section 37 of the Planning Act. Each are described briefly below.

(a)Build to Lease

With the exception of the past two years, the Children's Services Division has historically always had a capital program. For the most part, it pertained to the expansion of the municipally operated program. Over the years, 14 directly operated child care centres were built under a variety of capital cost sharing arrangements with the Province has been described above. The Metro Hall Child Care Centre was the only purpose built directly operated centre developed without a capital funding grant from the Province. In addition to the municipal centres that comprised the Division's capital plan, for a number of years that capital plan also included a "build to lease" provision. The concept, which had been approved by the former Metropolitan Toronto Council as part of the 1990 Comprehensive Review of Child Care, entailed the development of turnkey child care centres by the City in under resourced wards for operation by community operators. Regrettably, provincial cost sharing approval for this concept was never achieved and the plan for a cost shared development was abandoned. The current City agreement with Sam-Sor Enterprises to fund the development of a child care centre allows this concept to be resurrected. The Children's Services Division will work with Corporate Services to develop a child care centre which meets the City's Service Plan and Operating Criteria for Child Care. The finished product will then be turned over to a community-based operator to run.

(b)Loan Guarantee

In 1994, the former Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto approved criteria governing loan guarantees by the municipality for child care centres wanting to undertake renovations or reconstructions. Loan guarantee approvals for Allenby Child Care Centre, John Wanless Child Care Centre, Charlotte Child Care Centre and Growing Tykes Child Care Centre were sought in 1993, 1994 and 1997 respectively. The size of the loans varied from $280.0 thousand to $1 million. As mentioned earlier in this report, a loan guarantee for the construction of Earl Haig Child Care Centre is presently being sought.

The loan guarantee approach has been used as a strategy of last resort when other capital grants have not been available and when the centre in question can demonstrate through a business plan that it can carry the cost of the loan required to finance the development but needs a guarantor to secure the loan in the first place. Loan guarantees typically have proven a viable approach for programs that enjoy a mix of full fee and subsidized clientele and whose board is willing to assume the financial liability associated with the multi-year repayment of a substantial construction loan.

(c)Child Care Capital Reserve

The Child Care Capital Reserve was established in 1997 by the former municipality of Metropolitan Toronto in response to a summer crisis faced by child care centres in nine schools facing capital renovations Without capital financing for the child care centres located in the schools with renovation plans, these programs were facing the risk of closure. As a result of an unexpected provincial regulation change governing the treatment of subsidized child care user revenue, the municipality was allowed to retain significantly more user revenue than had been forecast. The Children's Services Division secured Council's permission to invest $1.3 million of this unanticipated revenue surplus in a Child Care Capital Reserve and to use it to lever contributions from both the federal government ($1 million) and two of the area municipalities ($700.0) towards the capital costs of 9 child care centres located in schools undergoing renovation. In this way, the capital costs of the following child care centres were financed: Central Eglinton($654.0 thousand), Gibraltar ($173.0 thousand), Lord Dufferin ($149.0 thousand), Parkdale ($308.0 thousand), Dalemount ($350.0 thousand), Dublin Heights ($350.0 thousand), Rockford ($350.0 thousand), Scarborough Village ($350.0 thousand) and Alderwood Action ($350.0 thousand).

In the summer of 1998, when three child care centres unexpectedly faced eviction as a result of changing school enrolment patterns, the criteria governing the use of the Child Care Capital Reserve was expanded, with Council approval, to include the payment of the relocation and renovation costs of child care centres evicted from school premises. To help finance the costs associated with the three centres being evicted, Council also approved the transfer of $1.9 million in surplus subsidized child care user revenue into the reserve account. The three centres assisted through this program were Pelmo Park (whose original renovation costs have increased from the $25.0 thousand originally approved to $150.0 thousand), Playhouse Child Care ($800.0 thousand) and Silverthorne Child Care ($125.0 thousand).

The Child Care Capital Reserve currently contains approximately $900.0 thousand of unallocated funds. However, this amount is insufficient to deal with the relocation and renovation costs associated with the twenty-one child care centres at risk of displacement as a direct or indirect result of year 2000 school closures in the City. The continued use of surplus subsidized child care user revenue to finance the capital costs of centres serving full fee as well as subsidized clients also requires reconsideration.

(d)Section 37 of The Planning Act

Section 37 of the Planning Act permits municipalities to pass zoning by-laws which authorize increases in the height and/or density of new development in exchange for the provision of public benefits. In the past, Section 37 has been used by the City's former local municipalities to secure the provision of affordable housing, heritage preservation, streetscape improvements, public art, licensed child care facilities and community service space, amongst other matters.

To date, the application of this planning mechanism has resulted in the construction of some of the few purpose-built child care centres within the City. Six such facilities, serving 329 children, are presently operational. Several others have been secured but have not yet been constructed. Section 37 can only be employed in instances where the developer has requested increases in height and/or density. The voluntary and site-specific nature of this tool does not lend itself to the need to provide capital funding for new child care facilities City-wide.

The current use of Section 37 is governed by the existing Official Plans for each of the former municipalities, which are still in force until the adoption of an Official Plan for the new City. The new Official Plan will need to harmonize the use of Section 37 across the City. A report on Section 37 will before the Planning and Transportation meeting scheduled for July 20, 1999. The report will recommend the development of interim guidelines for the City-wide application of this planning tool.

(e)Development Charges

In 1998, the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer was authorized to undertake the research necessary to implement a new development charges by-law consistent with the requirements of the new provincial Development Charges Act and to harmonize the different development charges of the former area municipalities. The public meeting to review the consultant's background study and the proposed charges was held at the Policy and Finance Committee meeting on June 24, 1999. Development charges are charges imposed against the development or redevelopment of land to pay for growth-related infrastructure, and are based on historical municipal capital expenditures for "hard services" such as roads, sewers and watercourses and "soft services" such as directly operated recreational facilities, parks and libraries. Due to the limited capital expenditures by the former municipalities for child care facilities, related charges are currently not included in the development charge calculation as proposed in the new City Development Charges By-law.

The Chief Financial Officer will have a report on the results of the June 24, 1999 Public Consultation process at the meeting of the Policy and Finance Committee meeting scheduled for July 20, 1999. This report brings forward the recommendation made by the Children and Youth Action Committee at its meeting on May 28, 1999 that amendments to the Provincial Development Charges Act, 1997 be made "to permit a municipality to take into account, for the purpose of determining the 'average level of service' referred to in paragraph 4 of subsection 5(1) of the Act, previous expenditures in providing a service if the cost of providing the service has been transferred from the Province to the municipality". The intent of this recommendation is to enable the City to give full consideration to the inclusion of child care in the development charge calculation of the City's new Development Charges By-law.

(f)Unavailability of Operating Dollars

While there is a clear need to expand the stock of licensed care service options for families, many families within the City will require fee subsidy assistance to be able to access licensed care even if it were available. Recent City efforts to secure matching provincial subsidy to fund even the 2,000 licensed space vacancies that currently exist within the City have not been successful. To date, the Province has also not agreed to further enhance the level of child care funding available to support the Ontario Works initiative and the level of funding support associated with the implementation of the mandatory LEAP program ($4.5 thousand per teen family) is also seen as being inadequate. This will be the subject of a future report to Council describing the program design and implementation plan in more detail.

Any new licensed child care programs created through a capital development strategy will not be eligible for wage subsidy assistance. Wage subsidy is a program established by the Province to help increase the wages of staff working in licensed child care programs. While it was originally financed 100 per cent by the Province, it is now cost shared 80:20 with the City and effective July 1, 1999, it will be managed by the City as part of downloading. The wage subsidy program is at its ceiling and is unlikely to receive any additional funds to support corresponding capital growth and development.

The lack of additional fee subsidies and wage subsidies will create financial challenges for any new child care programs developed under any capital financing strategy the City may wish to consider.

Conclusions:

The need for a child care capital plan to maintain existing service levels and to address unmet service needs has been summarized in this report. There is insufficient information at the moment to propose a specific five-year plan. Recommending a comprehensive capital financing strategy for child care development is also premature at this time. Public consultation on the City's proposed new Development Charges By-law has just been completed. The Official Plan is still under development and harmonization of the future use of Section 37 of the Planning Act has not yet been accomplished. The use of Section 37 of the Planning Act is still governed by existing Official Plans, until interim guidelines have been adopted by Council. Ultimately, harmonization will occur in the context of the new Plan.

While there are some opportunities to preserve existing strategies used to support major and minor capital needs in child care (e.g. child care capital reserve, loan guarantee program, reallocation of unspent fee subsidies to minor capital) these strategies alone are insufficient to meet the anticipated future capital funding requirements. In the interim, the City will also continue to research and review strategies used by other municipal jurisdictions to meet child care capital development needs.

A further report on the financing of child care capital development is recommended when decisions respecting the City's new Development Charges By-law and Official Plan are being considered. It is also recommended that the five-year capital development plan for child care be developed and incorporated into the multi-year business plan of the Children's Services Division while work continues on a more comprehensive capital funding strategy for child care within the City.

Contact Names:

Marna Ramsden-Urbanski, General Manager, Children's Services, Community and Neighbourhood Services; Tel.: 392-8128.

Ann-Marie Nasr, Manager, City-wide Policy and Programs, Urban Planning and Development Services; Tel.: 392-0402.

The Policy and Finance Committee submits the following communication (July 20, 1999) from Councillor Olivia Chow:

Whereas there is a growing need for childcare capital funds:

(a)unmet Service Demand of $33 million;

(b)cost of relocating centres due to school closures: $36.9 million;

(c)cost to provide barrier free services: $15 million;

(d)minor capital needs (annually): $1 million Total: $85.9 million, (pages 4-8 of Clause 42, report from the Commissioners on Child Care Capital Needs and Future Funding Strategies)

Whereas all provincial capital grant funding for child care was frozen in June 1995, and subsequently eliminated in 1996;

Whereas under the provincial Development Charges Act 1997, childcare facilities are ineligible for development charge funding due to a lack of a municipally funded capital program over the previous ten year period and the absence of a five to ten-year capital program (page 20 of Clause 1 i, report from the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer on City-wide Development Charge By-Law)

Therefore be it resolved:

(1)that the Mayor, together with the City's Children Advocate and other interested councillors, requests a meeting with the provincial government (Minister of Community and Social Services and/or the Premier's office) to discuss the urgency of provincial government funding for child care capital needs;

(2)that a copy of the Commissioner's report be sent to the Children and Youth Action Committee for its information and comment; and

(3)that the Commissioner report in the fall of 1999 on the development of a five to ten years childcare capital program and its funding sources.

 Councillor Olivia Chow appeared before the Policy and Finance Committee in connection with the foregoing matter.

(Councillor Pantalone declared his interest in this matter in that his children are registered in a child care centre which has a purchase of service agreement with the City of Toronto.)