Fremont Proposes Ambitious Plan for Latchkey Children

Gus Morrison, an aerospace engineer who serves as mayor of this sprawling San Francisco Bay suburb, used to wonder about the 6-year-old neighbor who returned from school each day to an empty house. When he had to arrange child care for his own two grandchildren, the costs and the waiting lists astounded him and he understood his latchkey neighbor.

Fremont, a haven of relatively inexpensive housing near the booming Silicon Valley, has become the fourth-largest city in the Bay Area, with a population of 160,000, including many young working couples with children. But it has fewer than 3,000 licensed openings for the 13,000 children needing full- or part-time day care.

While Congress considers several measures to ease the shortage here and elsewhere, Morrison and a unanimous Fremont City Council have proposed one of the nation’s most far-reaching plans to pay for child care: a $12 annual tax on every dwelling unit in the city, plus a 20% business tax increase and a 5- to 15-cent-per-square-foot charge on new buildings.

The funds from the levy would buy 30 portable child-care centers, one for each elementary school; subsidize day care for low-income families; train child-care workers and provide other services. Nine elementary schools now have child-care facilities, all of them operated by the YMCA.

Inadequate Funds

Faced with insufficient private day care, inadequate state funds and an uncertain federal commitment, communities throughout the United States are seeking their own solutions to a burgeoning child-care crisis. Their efforts are supported by rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, business leaders and educators.

The Fremont plan, which requires a two-thirds favorable vote on the November ballot, has been endorsed by the local Chamber of Commerce and won an award from the state Department of Education’s child-development division. It is only one of several initiatives in scattered American communities impatient for change.

Armed with a 1986 ballot measure that won 70% of the vote, Seattle school officials have begun a $5-million plan to open day-care space in 14 elementary schools. The Indiana Legislature has levied a cigarette tax to provide, among other things, $400,000 annually in new school-age child-care costs. Pinellas County, Fla., has created an independent taxing district to provide $11 million a year to local child and family services.

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), chairman of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, said such local efforts “may be the most important part” of a national effort to improve child-care services. “It influences decision-making by local companies and others” with money and influence, Miller said, and encourages federal lawmakers to take the issue seriously.

Congress is considering a bill, sponsored by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), that would provide an initial $2.5 billion for child-care subsidies and the cost of monitoring the program. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), citing federal budget constraints, has proposed a less ambitious, less expensive bill.

Fremont director of human services Suzanne Shenfil said many other cities have inquired about the program developed by her staff and a city task force. The child-care issue has risen to the top of other local agendas in California.

Recently, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley proposed a new $700-million program of tutors and child care in impoverished neighborhoods to help keep youngsters out of street gangs. The gangs, responsible for nearly 400 deaths last year, often use their youngest members to sell drugs.

San Francisco has a new ordinance requiring office or hotel builders to set aside child-care space or pay $1 per square foot to a city child-care program. Contra Costa County passed a law in January requiring large developers to provide day-care centers in any area where existing facilities cannot handle the additional children.

“This has been an exciting year,” said Ellen Gannett, education training coordinator at Wellesley College’s School-Age Child-Care Project. “Both conservatives and liberals are showing interest in child care. . . . It is really happening at all levels.”

Since 1970, the number of women who work outside the house and have children under 7 has nearly doubled. More than half of all women with preschool children are in the labor force. About 3,000 of the estimated 6 million employers in the country give their employees some form of child-care assistance.

Spreading Burden

Shenfil said Fremont’s plan is designed to distribute the burden among all major taxpayer groups--developers, businesses and homeowners--with the understanding that the new day-care centers also would charge those parents who could afford it.

The City Council was impressed with a study by the Assn. of Bay Area Governments projecting that Fremont’s population will grow by 49,900 between 1985 and 2005, faster than any other city in Alameda County. Rising housing costs, in some cases requiring 40% to 50% of young homeowners’ incomes, were expected to increase demands for affordable child care.

Morrison said increased charges to developers were expected to be politically popular. Even the proposed 20% increase in the business tax, the first such raise since 1974, has not met with much resistance. The $1 per month tax on every housing unit, including rentals, is expected to raise more opposition.

But Shenfil said city officials plan to point to federal Head Start studies showing that well-run preschool programs produce better public school students, and therefore fewer dropouts, fewer unemployed adults and fewer criminals.