Leaders from Fayetteville and Cumberland County decided on Monday to work together to ensure residents have access to childcare.
The Joint City and County Liaison Committee voted unanimously to pursue this topic further. The committee is made up of members of the Fayetteville City Council and Cumberland County Board of Commissioners. Others who attended the meeting included county school officials, and the directors of the county Health Department and county Department of Social Services.
The committee’s vote on childcare followed discussion about how the community should respond to and prevent people from attempting suicide.
Early childhood development is a factor, said City Councilor Derrick Thompson, and there is a shortage of childcare available to working parents locally and nationally. The community needs to increase the number of childcare providers, he said.
“I think the sooner that we get these kids, we can break the chain — we can break the cycle of where they were to where they’re going,” he said.
Cumberland County Schools Superintendent Marvin Connelly told Thompson that the Cumberland County Partnership for Children organization works with the city, the county and the school system to bring childcare options.
“We do need more funding here in Cumberland County for pre-K,” Connelly said. He suggested that the county consider building a pre-K center to accommodate more children.
The city previously discussed the childcare issue in 2019, Councilor Courtney Banks-McLaughlin said. She made the motion for a vote to pursue the matter again.
Mayor Mitch Colvin cautioned that efforts by the government to provide childcare services could hurt privately run childcare providers. “Margins are thin,” he said.
He suggested that the government offer childcare vouchers to parents or other incentives for them to hire the privately run centers, “just to make sure we don’t put existing people out of business.”
Commissioners Chair Kirk deViere warned that childcare centers face what has been described as a “funding cliff” in March. That’s when more than $33 million that the legislature last year allocated help childcare providers stay open is expected to run out.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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