Simplify Permits for Child-Care Center, Cut Fees, Panel Urges

The city of San Diego must streamline the cumbersome and expensive process by which it approves new child-care facilities and work with the San Diego Unified School District to increase the availability of inexpensive child care, a task force has recommended.

The Child Care Task Force, impaneled by Councilmen Ron Roberts and Wes Pratt, urged the waiver of fees that developers pay the school system and the city. City fees alone can be as much as $12,000.

The task force also suggested that the city develop land-use policies that encourage construction of child-care facilities in residential areas and business parks.

Streamlining Process

The task force also urged that the city’s new child-care coordinator, who is expected to be hired this month, immediately streamline and better define the process by which child-care providers acquire permits. Providers have long complained that they are bounced around city bureaucracy by staffers unaware of all the regulations governing child-care facilities.

“If you come in with a subdivision (application), the city knows exactly how to handle you,” said task force chairman David Poole, a Pardee Construction Co. executive who successfully fought city regulations to establish child-care facilities on Mira Mesa school campuses. “If you come in with a child-care facility, they don’t.”

The Childcare Resource Service estimates that licensed day-care facilities in the county can handle 62,602 children and that another 80,404 children are in need of licensed care. Of those, an estimated 48,000 to 63,000 are latchkey children who spend their afternoons unsupervised because their parents work and cannot arrange or afford child care.

The report was referred to the city manager’s staff.