CapMetro OKs child care provider deal
Board takes action after backlash from parents
After emotional appeals from more than a dozen parents, Capital Metro’s board of directors on Monday voted to approve a one-year contract renewal with a child care provider running an East Austin facility the Austin-area transportation authority has subsidized for nearly 17 years.
Though the 4-2 vote was celebrated by meeting attendees, the future of the Capital Metro Child Care & Early Learning Center, located at 624 N. Pleasant Valley Road, remains unsettled, despite a board vote last fall for CapMetro staff to evaluate the arrangement.
Without approval, the current contract would have expired March 31. Some parents, including some CapMetro employees using the service, said they would not have had enough time to make arrangements with a different child care provider had the vote failed.
The facility, located up the street from CapMetro’s primary East Fifth Street administrative building, opened in 2006, offering an income-based tuition subsidized by CapMetro for employees. In 2012, the transit agency opened the facility to the public in an effort to offset the subsidy.
Enrollment at the facility has dipped since 2012, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, a survey of CapMetro’s front-line and administrative employees suggested the on-site service did not “holistically meet” the needs of its employees, the majority of whom live outside of Austin and prefer child care facilities closer to home, according to a memo sent to board members Thursday.
CapMetro’s contractor, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, has run the facility since it opened. With Monday’s vote, CapMetro will continue working with the Massachusetts-based provider for the next year, though under new contract terms that place the cost burden on Bright Horizons rather than CapMetro should revenue fall.
Whether CapMetro will continue the arrangement beyond the next year remains to be seen. In a statement Monday, Jorge Ortega, a CapMetro spokesperson, said the staff is “committed to finding a solution” and will aim to develop strategies to give families “sufficient notice” of any future changes.
Supporters say it is imperative CapMetro finds an effective alternative to keep the subsidized facility operating, especially as the cost of living in Austin continues to rise and child care availability remains a challenge. Opponents say the current arrangement is an inefficient use of taxpayer funds and might stand on shaky legal footing since few CapMetro families use the benefit.
“We need to still solve the problem, and we recognize our responsibility to solve that problem in a way that provides the least harm,” said Dottie Watkins, CapMetro’s chief executive, during the meeting as she recommended board members approve the one-year contract.
In a statement, LeeAnn Hackler, a Bright Horizons regional manager, said the provider was thankful for nearly 20 years of working with CapMetro and serving hundreds of families. The company is looking forward to continuing the partnership, she said.
Hackler did not answer questions about the possible implications of CapMetro pulling subsidies from the facility, including whether the facility would be able to remain open.
As an alternative, the two CapMetro board members who voted against the one-year contract, Dianne Bangle and William M. “Matt” Harriss, suggested offering an employer-subsidized stipend for child care services – an alternative some employees favored in the August survey.
The CapMetro-Bright Horizons arrangement by the numbers
The current contract between Bright Horizons and CapMetro took effect in November 2016. To date, including the six-month extension, CapMetro has committed more than $7.6 million to the provider to run the facility, according to an online CapMetro contract portal.
The one-year contract approved Monday is more than $1.3 million, with tuition revenue expected to cover more than half, $756,054, according to CapMetro’s presentation to board members.
On average, the facility is at about 80% to 83% capacity and is working to achieve pre-pandemic levels. Since 2018, the share of CapMetro families enrolled in the program full-time has dropped from about 21% to 15% in January, according to an American-Statesman analysis of data captured as part of CapMetro’s evaluation of the service. In January, eight of the 52 families enrolled full-time were CapMetro families.
Citing the low number of CapMetro families using the service, Harriss said a possible contributing factor was that most CapMetro bus operators no longer live in Austin. Because of this, he suggested a child care stipend would better serve those employees.
“There’s a lot of reasons why people may not want to come all the way down to East Austin to be able to drop their kid off regardless of how good the center actually is,” Harriss said. “It’s an excellent center, but we have employees located all over a basically four-county footprint.”
Bangle also cited the low number of CapMetro families using the center and said CapMetro should seek a more costeffective means of addressing the issue.
“CapMetro needs to find a way to support child care for our employees, but authorizing a contract that provides almost $85,000 in subsidy for each of the eight families? It just doesn’t make sense,” Bangle said.
Remarks from participants of child care program
More than a dozen parents, both past and current recipients of the subsidized services, called on board members to allocate money to keep the facility open.
Among them was Jennifer Govea, a CapMetro employee of more than 20 years who said she enrolled her then-2year-old son in the program when it first opened in 2006. The benefits offered by CapMetro, including the child care center, are a key part of her rationale for staying at the transit agency when other job opportunities came along.
“The benefits have been more important to me than chasing the dollar at the next job,” Govea said.
Others, like Matthew Mejia, who joined CapMetro last fall as a planner, called on leaders to find a “creative solution” instead of considering possible benefits cuts.
“Maybe a stipend would work for some while this child care center helps others. Maybe the current contract doesn’t make sense but another would,” Mejia said. “These options are currently being pitted against each other, creating a false choice model for addressing this problem.”
Leadership for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091, which represents more than 1,200 bus operators and mechanics in the Austin area, did not return inquiries Monday about the board’s vote or the facility.
In November, the Austin City Council voted to enact an ordinance offering property tax relief to child care providers in the city, making Austin the first city to do so after voters across the state approved Proposition 2 – which grants cities the authority – with 64% of the vote.
Child care facilities must apply and be approved by the Travis Central Appraisal District for the relief. Since the ordinance took effect earlier this year, 10 child care facilities have submitted applications that are pending as of Monday, appraisal district spokesperson Cynthia Martinez said.
Bright Horizons is not among the applicants. However, the provider might be exempt from paying property tax because the North Pleasant Valley Road facility is owned by CapMetro, a governmental entity, Martinez said.
The availability of child care in Texas is likely to remain a top issue. According to a policy brief published last week by the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the issue is “poised to become one of the paramount policy issues” facing the Legislature when it convenes for the 89th session next year.
“We need to still solve the problem, and we recognize our responsibility to solve that problem in a way that provides the least harm.”
Dottie Watkins