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Donna Badgett spent more than a year on the waiting list before the Johnson’s 2 day care center on Old Third Street Road had room for her two boys, ages 4 and 2. It’s been worth every minute, she says, and every cent of the $90 each week she’s paid to keep them there. Of course, anyone who has ever had a child enrolled at a decent day care center knows that $90 a week for two kids is a pittance compared to the hundreds of dollars it costs most parents. But for Badgett, a single mother who earns slightly more than $12 an hour, that $90 is all she can afford.

For the past two years, a child-care subsidy of about $100,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds has allowed Badgett and many others like her to do what they can’t on their own: go to work knowing their kids are safe and well-cared for by qualified professionals.

But after 27 years of allocating CDBG money for child care, Metro Louisville officials changed plans. In the last round of allocations, a program to clean up vacant lots got nearly $2 million of the funds that might have gone to child care; child care got zip.

Badgett has been notified she’ll have to pay in full for her kids to att/files/storyimages/day care next month when the pool of money she relied on completely dries up. That’ll be close to $200 a week, and Badgett has no idea where it will come from.

“We’re like little sitting ducks over here,” she says.

The subsidy program Badgett participates in is one of four overseen by Community Coordinated Child Care, which is more commonly known as 4Cs. Unless the CDBG money is reallocated to the agency, or funding from another source is located to make up the difference, about 40 families will lose child-care subsidies next month, says Susan Vessels, 4Cs’ executive director. She’s applied for additional funding from Metro Louisville government, which already gives the agency about $100,000 each year, but the budget process for the next fiscal year is still in the planning stage.

“We won’t know until the /files/storyimages/of June, which is why we had to go ahead and let people who are in the HUD program know that at the /files/storyimages/of June they weren’t going to have child-care [subsidies],” Vessels says.

But she thinks there are other solutions.

“In our mind, what the answer to this would be is that they take some money that they have allocated in the comprehensive plan, that’s CDBG for, say, vacant lot programs, and put it back into child care. It seems like vacant lots might be able to do with ($1.4 million).”

Cute kids vs. vacant lots

A vacant lot program pays to clear vacant lots and demolish abandoned houses in poor neighborhoods, which are often used by drug dealers. Even so, giving money to such programs instead of to parents like Badgett may look like a heartless move by government officials. But Vessels herself is quick to point out that the people who dole out the money in Metro Louisville have historically made child care a priority.

“There are no other examples of local governments [in Kentucky] that have chosen to allocate their money like that,” she says. “In other cities, if the federal or state government doesn’t pay for child care, families are just out of luck.”

And while workers at some of the area’s largest and most profitable companies call on 4Cs for child care, often at the expense of Metro Louisville taxpayers, city workers don’t have to. Metro government does what only a handful of progressive employers do: take care of its own by picking up the tab — 100 percent — for the child care some employees need to keep their jobs.

When the budget hearings start, Beth Stinburg, the council’s financial adviser, expects that Metro Council members won’t ignore child-care funding, although she can’t guarantee the issue will be resolved. Stinburg says members of the panel that advises the Mayor on the budget have indicated that child care is a real need, due in part to contact from constituents like Badgett.

Badgett directed her correspondence to Renay Davis, an aide to Councilman Doug Hawkins, because she thought a woman was more likely to understand the urgency of finding a way to continue funding child-care subsidies like the ones that have kept her children in day care. “I don’t normally stand up,” Badgett says of the numerous e-mails she exchanged with Davis. “I’m not doing it for me; it’s for my kids.”

Badgett has explained to Davis, and anyone else who will listen, exactly how big the impending crisis could be. “It’s going to be horrible,” she says. “I’m going to be at least $500 negative every month, and I don’t know what to do. … I’ve taken things away that weren’t necessary to see what I could do without, and it’s still not going to help me.”

She’s not just talking about giving up extras like cable television, new clothes and toys, or even home phone service. She’s talking about giving up things that most people see as fundamentally necessary, like her $550 a month apartment. She can’t move in with her parents, because there are already too many people there and the atmosphere is too tense for her little boys. Her only option is to move around and stay with various friends if she wants to keep the job she’s had for the past three years.

“A lot of my friends live in one-bedroom apartments, so it’s going to be hard with me and my two [kids],” she says.

Badgett does have a car she could give up, which would save her about $250 a month in car payments and insurance, she says. But giving up a car that is worth less than she owes may damage her credit, which isn’t stellar already. And because apartment managers are hesitant to rent to someone with bad credit, she could /files/storyimages/up with nowhere to stay long after her kids are in school and day care is no longer a problem.

“I’ve worked diligently to try to get her help,” says Davis. “I forwarded this to the Mayor’s office to let them know how serious this is. … I know we’re working on trying to get this money back in the budget next month, but we just don’t know yet.”

It’s the uncertainty that actually gives Vessels hope. If others do what Badgett did and let their council members know how important subsidized child care is, its chances may improve.

“These are the folks that are forgotten most of the time,” says Vessels. “They’re out there working their tails off every day, and they’re usually not getting any other assistance. This is the only assistance they get, and it allows them to have some quality of life.”

Contact the writer at rrenford@leoweekly.com [4]