Members of a coalition of local community and faith-based groups will be staging a rally outside the Monroe County Office Building this evening.
They're calling on all three candidates for county executive to pledge to double of the number of children who receive child care assistance.
"The biggest need for child care assistance is outside the city. The inner ring suburbs and the outer ring suburbs are seeing a huge need with low income working parents applying to the county for assistance and not getting it," said John Greenbaum, an organizer with RocACTS (the Rochester Alliance of Communities Transforming Society ).
Greenbaum says his group has collected postcards signed by more than 5,000 Monroe County residents voicing their support for the increase in child care subsidies.
Lisa McCabe, co-chair of the Early Childhood Development Initiative, said participants in tonight’s rally will display the postcards end-to-end, forming a one-half mile chain. McCabe called child care subsidies a backbone of the community.
"They not only allow children to participate in high quality early care and education programs, but they also allow parents to participate in the paid labor force, which in turn supports businesses which are employing those parents, and they also support local child care business."
Monroe County’s budget this year cut funding for child care subsidies by $600,000, but the county received an additional $2.3 million through the state’s Child Care Block Grant to provide care for an additional 375 children.
RocACTS is hosting a public meeting on the issue at 6:30 p.m. on October 22 at In Christ Ministries at 155 Pinnacle Road in Henrietta. Greenbaum said Democratic Monroe County Executive candidate Sandra Frankel and Green Party candidate Rajesh Barnabas have agreed to attend the meeting, but he said Republican candidate Cheryl Dinolfo has not responded to the group's invitation.
