Summit County Council members have expressed their support for an $80,000 increase in child-care funding. The increase would be part of the 2025 budget county councilors plans to finalize by the end of the month.

“Supporting child care actually helps advance the council’s priorities,” Deputy County Manager Janna Young said Wednesday. “In terms of affordable housing, child-care scholarships reduce financial burdens on families, so it enables them to allocate more resources toward their housing costs. It also helps keep these families in the community.”

The county currently operates two child-care programs, one of which caters to community members while the other serves county employees. The programs launched in June with a budget of $280,000, six months after Park City Municipal implemented a similar initiative in January.

The program for employees has a few differences than the one designed for community members, such as a match from the county. Generally, however, the goal is to provide child-care scholarships, allowing families that either work or live in Summit County to cover the costs of day-care enrollment.

In 2024, approximately $184,000 of the $280,000 budget funded community child-care scholarships. Young told the County Council the demand from county workers was much lower than expected with $96,000 allocated for government employees.

As a result, the proposal for 2025’s budget includes $300,000 for community scholarships and $60,000 for county staff.

“The state also provides child-care subsidies through the Department of Workforce Services, and this really targets lower income families,” Young added. “One of the stipulations of our agreement with Upwards [the company that helps the county administer scholarships] is that as families apply for our scholarship programs, same as Park City, that Upwards would, if they ended up being income-eligible for the DWS subsidy that they would have to apply for that.”

In January, only 19 Summit County households received child-care subsidies from the Department of Workforce Services. By September — three months after the county launched its two programs — that number had increased to 40 households.

Locally, there are around 100 eligible families waitlisted for Summit County’s community child-care scholarships, but Young said the $80,000 increase in the budget would simply allow the program to last a full year.

“Obviously, we’d love to do more, but we understand the constraints we have,” Young said. “It is a modest commitment. An $80,000 increase is about 0.089% of this $90 million budget. It does not significantly take anything away from other county initiatives, and from what [Chief Finance Officer Matt Leavitt] tells me, he’s able to fit this into the balanced budget that he has presented to you. On the other side, it has a huge impact on families. We get to add four additional months of coverage between 2024 and 2025, creating that stability for families.”

Multiple county councilors, including Chair Malena Stevens, Vice Chair Tonja Hanson and Canice Hart, thanked Young for her presentation and expressed their support for continuing the child-care scholarships and increasing the budget.

The County Council expects to approve the proposed $90 million budget by January.

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Summit County councilors want to take a deeper look at child care and senior services funding after a budget proposal on Friday morning left them with questions.

Last year, the County Council approved a $280,000 budget for a new dependent care program to meet child-care needs. Roughly half of the funds were allocated to an employee-assistance program for county employees, while the other half was dedicated to a workforce-assistance program for community members.

County Manager Shayne Scott said that both programs have been well received and requested that the County Council consider funding them again in 2025 with an increased budget of $360,000. Scott said that the Budget Committee originally recommended another $280,000 budget but that the county should have more flexibility after voters approved the Emergency Services Sales Tax on Election Day.

There is an established group of parents who have already applied and been accepted into the workforce assistance program, Scott said, and there’s still a 100-person waitlist for other interested parents. The increased budget would allow the county to continue meeting the needs of the already accepted group and possibly expand the program for new families as well, he explained.

Councilor Roger Armstrong said that he would prefer to keep child-care funding where it is, expressing concerns about nightly rentals and his desire to use the county’s financial flexibility to hire another code enforcement officer to regulate business licenses.

He added that he would also want to see what other entities in the community, like the ski resorts, have done to help with child care.

“It’s not affecting our workforce,” Armstrong said, referring to child-care availability. “We found out what the demand here is. I want to know what other major employers are doing to contribute to this. If everybody is pulling the oars, I’m inclined to support it, but if we’re the only ones carrying the load, I would not support that.”

Councilors Canice Harte, Chris Robinson, Vice Chair Tonja Hanson and Chair Malena Stevens said that they’re inclined to support funding child care at a higher level. However, all four councilors said that before making a decision, they want more information on other areas of the budget to make a holistic conclusion and ensure that the County Council is prioritizing the right projects.

The proposed budget for senior services, which Scott also presented Friday morning, increased by 22% for a total of $501,000 in 2025.

“I would like seniors to have more, but this is a fairly good increase, all things considered for this year,” Hanson said. “I would support this.”

Hanson also said that she’d been hearing about funding issues for Meals on Wheels programs throughout Utah, and she wanted to know if the nonprofit grants from the county would cover what the organization had requested.

Finance Officer Matt Leavitt said that Meals on Wheels applied for $10,000 in funding and were approved for $8,000, and that the application did not mention being underfunded or problems making deliveries.

The County Council decided to hold a work session to get more details about both child care and senior services before making a decision about the budget.

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