Left Wondering : Child Care Operator Loses Facility Despite Good Reviews

After 23 years of serving low-income clients in South-Central Los Angeles, Betty Boop’s Child Care Center is out of business and its owner, Betty McDonald, can’t help but wonder if she is the victim of bureaucracy run amok.

Betty Boop’s closed in July after the city determined that conditions at the building where she operated were unsafe. But the center’s landlord was the city itself.

Over the last few years, city officials indicated that McDonald was doing a fine job, and she thought she was working “hand in hand” with them to find a better site.

But she thought wrong. Some of the same officials evicted her last July.

This week a City Council committee discussed a site for a new child care center, the one McDonald thought would be hers, while she sat in the City Hall audience, ignored.

“I don’t know what happened,” McDonald said.

Officials said the eviction was no reflection on McDonald. One city report states: “The major problems evident . . . relate to the inadequacies of the city’s facility.”

But it is the mild-mannered 59-year-old McDonald who suffered the consequences, losing her livelihood and her business, which provided services for children in an area that city officials say has a critical shortage of child care.

McDonald said she had been working with the city for nine years on ways to make a better facility and still preserve her low fees, which were $50 a week. At some point city officials went in a different direction, but they don’t say precisely why they parted ways with McDonald.

Gloria Clark, director of human services and neighborhood development for the city’s Community Development Department, said McDonald had provided a “very good service over the years.”

Nonetheless, Clark said she believes the city made the right decision: “I see it as accepting our responsibility to ensure quality child care is provided.”

The state Department of Social Services, which licenses child care centers throughout the state, renewed McDonald’s license in 1990 for three years.

Despite the state certification, in July three city officials--Clark, the city’s child care coordinator and a city building inspector--collectively decided the children should be removed from the building after visiting the site. According to the official report the violations included missing ceiling plaster, an “unsound” garage and defective light fixtures.

“The property was deteriorating to the point it was not in safe condition, even though it was licensed by the state,” said Patsy Lane, the child care coordinator. The city would not repair it, she added, because the building was “beyond rehabilitation.”

However, a spokeswoman for the state’s child care licensing division said she was surprised by the city’s harsh assessment because records from its last inspection in June show no violations that would have endangered children.

Clark said her Community Development Department monitors had never recommended eviction before. She faulted neither McDonald nor the city for the building’s condition. “I don’t see the value of determining blame,” she said.

Clark said McDonald could have rented another site, but McDonald said she could not find an affordable place and maintain fees--which are about $15-a-week less than prevailing rates--within the 30-day period the city gave her.

McDonald agreed that the building needed repair and said that was why she first approached the city in 1982. The city bought the site in 1986 and gave McDonald a rent-free, month-to-month lease. Since then, the Community Development Department had the job of monitoring the property and securing money needed for improvements.

Despite the fact that the city is temporarily subsidizing the higher costs for McDonald’s former clients at their new centers, some mothers still preferred Betty Boop’s.

Anna Albarenga was walking with her son, Chris, on Florence Avenue this week when the 4-year-old spotted McDonald. He ran up and threw his arms around her.

Asked how she felt about the center’s closing, Albarenga pointed to her son. “He’s telling you,” she said. Albarenga said she disliked the new place and took her son out after two months.

Meanwhile, McDonald feels left out of plans for the new child care center, which will be financed with $560,000 in federal funds. Clark contends that McDonald is welcome to compete with other child-care providers to run the new center when it is built.

“I feel like I just set this up for someone else to benefit,” McDonald said. “My biggest mistake was ever going to the city in the first place.”