New Milford Mom Asks Mayor Gronbach to Reconsider Insurance Cuts for Children's Center Workers

By MERIMA TRAKO (Open Post)

Dear Mayor Gronbach:

I am writing this letter to you as a working mother and a resident of town of New Milford. I was excited when you were elected mayor and I was looking forward to all the changes that you promised to make in our town. My family and I have been residents of New Milford since 2003 and we have seen great potential of our town go to waste by the previous administration and our hopes were that this would be changed when you were elected to the office.

I admire your transparency and initiatives you started when you took the office. So far I believe you have worked well with both town officials and listening to public opinions to establish strategic plan for our town. There were times when you had to implement tough measures to bring the fiscal stability to our town (cutting costs, working with the sewer plant officials to collect payments and revise their strategy, working with the board of education to come up with a reasonable budget, etc). I command you for it. You have a difficult job of satisfying New Milford employees and their initiatives and also keeping the residents’ costs down by reducing the taxes and improving our facilities.

The reason for my letter is your recent decision to review insurance costs and the proposal to remove workers of the New Milford Children’s Center from the insurance premium payments of Town of New Milford. I can understand your reasoning, these workers are not employees of Town of New Milford directly and therefore your initiative to remove them from the premium policy was a reasonable one. I can support and understand that.

However, as a working mother, with a husband that works too, I have a firsthand experience of how important a good childcare is. Also, another very important factor is finding an affordable childcare that would fit a working family’s budget (at times our childcare expense was 20% of our combined income). My husband and I are fortunate that we were able to afford childcare even though it was a substantial part of our budget.

We used Tia’s Daycare School and Center in town because it was close to our house and very convenient. We’ve been their patrons for the past seven years. Management there strived to provide excellent childcare while keeping our costs down. They did not offer healthcare insurance to their workers to be able to keep the costs for the families reasonable. We have been very happy with the work they were doing. However, three weeks ago we were informed that they are closing their doors after ten years of service to the families of New Milford. Given the economic situation and the rising costs they were not able to sustain profitability of their business. We were shocked and we were left trying to find another daycare provider.

While my family and other families that used Tia’s were facing the imminent change and the search for another daycare provider your decision to cut the funding (in form of the health care premium payments) appeared in the papers. Even though I did not use Children’s Center services I’ve known people who worked there and also parents who used their services. The fact that this is the only place that working mothers who are not fortunate like me to make enough money to cover the full time daycare costs can send their children too based on their sliding pay scale, made me worried how these mothers and fathers would be affected.
Just this morning I learned that another daycare center is closing in New Milford (Kindercare) and it makes me wonder how can a town of 28,000 people be sustained by 4-5 daycare centers (some which are pretty small)?

One of your campaign promises was to fight to ensure that our town has a good school system to attract young families like mine to live in New Milford, thus increasing our tax revenue and in general bringing more stability to our town. If working families must look for another town that has better early childhood education offerings than you are undercutting your initiatives and your plan.

Further, we must be able to support women who wish to stay in the workforce. There are numerous studies that show how important it is not to lose this resource, for betterment of our children and for the overall economical growth and in general for better families. Many women don’t have this choice, but we must do what we can to make this an option.

Therefore, I wish you reconsider your decision to cut the insurance premium payments for the Children’s Center workers. We cannot afford to lose another daycare center and a not-for-profit one too. We must work harder to open viable child care options for more families in New Milford to be able to help women who wish to enter workforce do that. Not everyone has a family member who can help with child care. We must work to expand Youth Agency’s child care program and perhaps work with the Children’s Center to expand their offerings (not shrinking them).

Best regards,
Merima Trako
Working mom, resident of New Milford