Van Buren Daycare Project may be over before it is started.
A low-income daycare project came before Committee B on Tuesday night. Mayor David Sullivan said he had made several phone calls and discovered that previously discussed daycare subsidies were not available.
Commissioner Michael Woodlee said the only reason the previous commission had moved on the project was to offer low-cost daycare for local parents. Woodlee said without subsidies the costs would be too high to benefit struggling families.
“See according to some of the paperwork that I found,” Sullivan said. “It said that Greg [Wilson] had had an agreement with Upper Cumberland that they were going to pay a portion of a child’s, well I think some of the commissioners got told that.”
Woodlee said just opening a daycare center was useless because people can do that on their own at their own property. All but one commissioner expressed interest in canceling the project altogether.
Commissioner Brick Wall said he thought the project should be brought back to full commission.
“We could kick it to the whole commission and say, Let’s have this commission and this mayor decide if we still want to do this daycare.”
Sullivan said everyone needed to keep in mind if there is not enough money then the county has to kick in until the project is completed.
The committee voted to bring the project to the full commission meeting on May 16 with a recommendation to hold further discussion in a work session.
