Worksession re AO 2025 70 , amending 16.55 - June 27, 2025

Okay, so why don't we dive in. Welcome everybody, today is, um, June 27th, 2025, Friday. Um, it's 1:01 PM on the calendar, from 1 to 2 PM today. We're here to discuss AO 2025-70, which is an ordinance to Anchorage Assembly amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care Licensing. Code to reduce burdens on licensed child care providers by repealing Sections 16.55.060, 16.55.115, and 16.55.180, and amending Sections 16.55.170 and 16.55.250.

We'll start with introductions. Mr. Johnson. Zach Johnson. Chair, Chair, Chair. Scott Myers.

Katie Corbett. Erin Baldvina. Hannah Morley. Christopher Constant. Any members on the phone?

Seeing none, then we'll proceed to welcome our presenters. Kimberly Craft, Director for the Anchorage Health Department. Darcy Montalvo, Human Services Division Manager for the Anchorage Health Department. Donna Speep, Child Care Licensing Supervisor. So we also have Mr. Heard, Assembly Legal, and it said it was drafted by the Department of Law, kind of surprised to find none of them here, but that's okay.

I think Director Eckstrom has the students. Go ahead.

Yes, also the Department of Law should be on the phone, but it's not. Other than Mr. Gates on the phone, is there anyone else other than interpreters? No. Okay, so for now, you have the floor. Thank you so much.

So today we're going to be talking about the changes that we have proposed to AMC 16.55. I have a presentation. This document, or this AO and AR, will be coming back to the body on the 15th of July.

Somebody unmuted on the phone. Oh, we're muted. Thank you. Go ahead. All right, thank you, John.

Um, excuse me, so you will be seeing this document come back to you, um, for a vote on the 15th of July. Uh, in today's agenda, we're going to go over the timeline of AMC 16.55, the community feedback, the ways that we receive feedback our survey results. We had sent out a survey in 2024, how the Health Department is trying to reduce barriers to child care licensing and licensing of home city facilities within the municipality, the proposed changes, and then some next steps that we have envisioned for our communities.

So, sorry about my voice, it's a little crackly. Starting off in August of 2016, child care Licensing and the Municipality adopts the State of Alaska Child Care Program Office statutes, regulations, policies, and procedures. We continue to operate under those, uh, to current. As of March of 2020, the states and cities order widespread school closures hoping to curb the spread of COVID but child care programs are urged to remain open for essential workers in the child care— for child care needs. In March 2021, between 16,000 and 20,000 child care programs closed, per a report from Child Care Aware of America, as a result of the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act is signed into law, and $24 billion for child care stabilization grants is provided to states. Alaska received $45.3 million in child care stabilization grants. However, child care programs continued to decline at that time. September of 2023, federal funding for child care services from the ARPA and, uh, September 30th of 2023, March and April 2024, our child care licensing program started to continue to see actually the decline of child licensed child care facilities within the municipality. And so in order of us to figure out what was going on, we needed to send out a survey to all of our licensed child care administrators So we did so in March and it closed in April of 2024.

And this was an attempt to identify those barriers to child care as more homes and centers continue to close. As of August of 2024, the Anchorage School District changes the school schedule, which created an additional impact to parents' schedules and child care staffing needs here within the municipality. In March of '25, our child care licensing team met with the ACE Board to provide the preliminary briefing describing some of the recommendations for change. And then in their June 1st meeting, we presented with them again the final changes that we have that you see in front of you in the AO. And they did vote on it with resounding positivity and approval of the recommended changes that we had.

Additional history, so you can see on this chart the decrease, the overall decrease of licensed homes centers from February 2020 to 2025. Again, during COVID when most businesses closed either temporarily or long-term, child care facilities made great efforts to remain open. In Anchorage, there was health and safety measures required that were frequently updated, and each new measure required more time, effort, costs, and staffing. It made for fewer children that, that could attend at the time. Facilities were stretched thin with staffing and with financial worries.

Through COVID and following that, many facilities either closed temporarily or just never reopened. In addition, THRED has noted an overall decline of available licensed child care throughout the state and is currently seen to be at 25% fewer than pre-COVID, which is that rate that you see at the bottom there. Hold on real quick, real quick. I'm sorry, I should first say for the record, 104, uh, Miss Overstreet, this is Ms. Yeah, thanks.

And this is maybe more a follow-up than digging into it today. I just want to be cautious, or at least say childcare has been very expensive and difficult to operate for many years in this city. And so I want to make sure that we're not— and I know this is, I'm guessing, something you intend— that we're not characterizing this as COVID broke the system, because I understand the reason to show that. But I think also that it gets us into a side conversation about, you know, when millions of people die, what do you do as a public health intervention? So I just want to I want to put that on the record, but I would be interested kind of in a longer— if you guys have data on the number of licensed facilities and especially kind of how many open versus how many closed, maybe over the last 10 years back to 2015.

Um, again, not to derail the conversation here, but I think it's just really important because I remember at least 10 years ago my co-workers saying, I'm on a 6-month waiting list for my infant, right? I mean, so this is not a new problem and it is very much not caused by COVID. And so I just want to really seeing that, but I would be interested in what that data is. Thanks. Thank you.

Yes, that is correct. This has been a historical problem across many cities throughout the United States. It's not just, uh, tied to COVID. However, we just wanted to— we only did a look back to the last 5 years, but we can definitely go back farther. Um, and so again, it just shows the decline in licensed homes and centers that we are currently operating within the municipality.

Um, so as a way to, um, continue to receive our feedback and understand what the issue was, we received feedback, regular feedback, from 3 main areas. And those 3 main areas are from parents, administrators, and child care workers. Parents, they provide copious amounts of feedback on the shortage of facilities and lack of space. We get those through phone calls Annual written evaluations sent to us for— with each licensed facility. You receive complaints of that, that it's just difficult and what those barriers are, and those are part of the changes that we are making here and going over today.

We receive community feedback from administrators through our just our day-to-day operations, phone calls, on-site inspections, and then additionally through that survey that we provided in March of 2024. Um, again, more feedback coming in from child care workers. So we have on-site conversations with staff members, uh, within facilities, and we receive that feedback from staff, um, also via phone calls. Uh, within the past 2 years, the Governor's Task Force, um, had convened, and they had produced 2 documents. Um, Document 1 is actually really what pertains to child care licensing and then the barriers that we're seeing are documented within that task force documentation.

So we use that as another way to inform the decisions that we are making today.

Uh, the survey that was sent out in March 2024 had 8 questions total. We sent those all out to administrators within facilities and homes, and then we started with questions that our agency leadership here in our child care licensing team knew were issues which were pertaining to school-age ratios, online training for homes, the number of children in the first year of licensing for a home, and children's physicals. Childcare licensing team tried to make the questions really apply to those areas to see what that feedback would be. Out of the 8 questions here today in this proposal, in the AO, we are trying to address 4 of those, of which 3 of them still need, um, coming back to the body with a second round of code revisions. So questions 1 and 2 relate to school-age ratios, uh, question 6, which talks about increasing from 6 children to 8 in the provisional first year of home, and then question number 7, which is planning to care for school-agers in 2024-2025 school year.

And those are the ones that we are addressing in this current AO. In the future round of code revisions, we will be looking at questions 3, 4, and 5 which pertains to online training requirements for homes and children's physical skin centers. And so the next couple of slides just talk about and give you those results. They are sort of small, so my apologies, but we tried to kind of condense as much. So if we move on and Pierce's question will resolve—.

Yeah, would you, would you just re-list which of these questions are addressed in that current AO and which will be addressed in that future iteration? Yes. So current questions that are addressing the current AO is 1, 2, 6, and 7. Next round would be 3, 4, and 5. Question number 8 was just an open-ended question.

I can get to that in a second. Okay. Alright. So again, these are just the questions, the answers that we received.

And for number 8, we did put in all of the written text here, but Um, this was the number one request that we did receive from question 8. The question is, if not already addressed above, what are your top 3 items you would like to see changed or added to AMC 16.55? And the number one request was to change the 1 to 30 requirement for staff to children present for a child care associate, which is a CCA. A CCA has to meet the same requirements as an administrator and be in a ratio throughout the center. At a 1 to 30 for the number of children present.

This requirement has been a huge hurdle, uh, and a catalyst for approximately 30% of all of our variances that our team, our child care licensing team, undergoes. And just to notate, one variance does take substantial amount of time for one staff member. And so when you're looking at about 30% of these variances, that is a lot of staff time to complete those. This was a State of Alaska requirement. However, the state office listened to the feedback from the governor's task force, and this requirement was changed on October 9th, 2024.

It is now called an associate administrator, and only one has to be designated per center. And so that number one concern we heard was addressed through our state partners. Other questions asked in our other Items addressed in number 8 is, can we change the toddler capacity in a home for no more than 3 under 30 months, um, so that no more than 3 under 18 months? This is a state requirement, and one of the things I probably should have mentioned early on is that we are state-funded. This program is 100% state-funded through grants, and so often we are following all of the state's requirements.

That's why we adopted those in 2016. The municipality can be more restrictive. However, we can't, um, be less restrictive than the state. Sorry, I was rushed. Go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Um, I'm curious, I think I generally understand why the ratios are important. I know it's a big part of this discussion. Can you unpack a little bit more about why staff ratios, like, kind of what the decision is and why they would be different for younger kids versus older kids? I know that's been a big kind of theme in the discussion.

Yeah, and I think the easiest way to sort of explain it, um, ratio stats is if you are caring for multiple children that are unable to exit a facility if there is a fire, how is one person going to be able to carry out multiple amounts of infants or those that cannot walk outside the facility safely? And so really staffing ratios really depend on the health and safety of not only inside the facility but also if there was an emergency at the facility and making sure that everyone can exit that facility. Thanks. Reducing barriers. So how is the Health Department trying to reduce these barriers?

First is really the decision to update this piece of code. We have developed web-based forms that can be completed electronically now, which was a barrier in the past. And the state has actually transitioned to a new database that will eventually reduce barriers. We say eventually because this new database was just deployed probably about 6 to 7 months ago. October 1st.

October 1st. And so we're still working through the iterations of making sure that it works at the municipality level and making sure that everyone is trained on how to complete the documents that are contained within those, which is the actual inspections. So we are working through that process currently. All right, so what changes are we making in this AO? So there are a few, and these are done high level, and then I'll go through each one of them.

We are trying to remove fees, so those are annual fees, change fees, plan review change fees, and this aligns with our state of Alaska partners. Removing the requirements for liability insurance. This aligns with the state of Alaska. We're in— we are trying to increase capacity from 6 to 8 during the provisional, which is the first year of a licensed home. This aligns with our state of Alaska partners.

We're increasing ratios for school-age child care, or child— school-aged care, sorry, and adopting the state school-age ratios. We're removing the minimum age of 6 weeks for enrollment in the center Again, this aligns with the state. We're removing the requirement to have a minimum of 2 caregivers present at all times. We're removing specific bathroom requirements that can be cost prohibitive and amending language and requirements for playground inspections. One of the biggest catalysts of making these changes and the ones that we chose here today is that they all have a financial impact, um, and that they are burdensome to the administrators in the homes and the facilities.

And so those were the ones that we chose. Now, the second round would be less cost-prohibitive but still are needed. So those are kind of the driving factors that we had here. So the first one is removing fees— so the annual fees, change fees, and plan review fees. Annual fees range from $50 for a home to $125 to $375 for centers depending on the license capacity.

Fees for plan review and changes range from $15 to $130 depending upon the capacity. So this section of code, it really benefits the administrators. It removes the financial requirement of annual renewal fees and fees assessed per change. This does— this actually ties back to the summary of economic impacts that you see with the AO, and that the health department will be losing around $37,000 annually in revenue. Good question.

Sasha, what's yours? Yeah, I just have questions on the one— I have questions on removing the requirement for liability insurance. And I think on the surface that sounds like, you know, that would save providers money, but when you look deeper into that, I fear that that's good until somebody actually needs that insurance, and then, you know, maybe they go bankrupt or they're center has to close because they don't have that protection. Yeah, I can actually, uh, you can go to that one.

All right, um, and so really looking at this liability insurance, we kind of tried to do some fact-finding as to why it was, um, in code. And from what we could tell, it's not a municipal requirement, nor is it a state requirement. But to your point, Yes, that could happen. This really allows the ownership onto that entity and that organization to make that determination if they need that liability insurance or not. But I think it is something that we can look into and see, and Donna may have some more information as to what she has heard from administrators on this specific topic.

The idea behind this one really was to let this become an business decision. I don't know how many may choose to let go of it. I have— centers have a significant amount of liability, but homes do too, and we have had incidences where they've had to use it, children have been hurt. But the idea was to let them make that decision. The state does not require liability insurance and never has, and we have heard it ranges in expense.

Some of it is—. Some policies seem to be very expensive. Um, and then we've also gotten feedback that is becoming increasingly, increasingly more difficult to find coverage. For homes, this is not just a rider that you can get on your homeowners. It's, it's insurance that has to be taken out specifically for child care.

And off the top of my head, I know one company that does it. And it's out of Minneapolis. And so we don't endorse any one company, but we end up kind of steering people there because they have to have insurance right now. It's an expense before they can get licensed, and right at this time it's the only one I'm aware of that does it. I do think that it's a little bit easier for centers to get commercial insurance, and we see it from all over, but homes struggle to find this.

I guess, uh, for a follow-up question, um, if a home decides not to get that insurance and a child is injured and has a extensive medical bills, um, how does that end up being covered? Who pays for that? Will somebody cover it, uh, for that child that's injured? I was just going to say, I think that would then be, um, really that conversation between the administrator, the home administrator, and that family. The municipality would not have any authority within that realm there, but I think it is something to note, JB, because obviously one of the basis of why we exist is for the health and safety of children in their community.

Yeah, I would also like to add some of the feedback that we had heard in terms of being able to find anybody to cover. As I was looking for best practices, what seeing is that in the lower 48, people are dropping the requirement for kind of the same reason. It's harder and harder for them to find insurance companies willing to do this. Also, from the provider side, they were becoming concerned because one incident would then shut them down essentially or jack their rates up so high they couldn't afford to continue. To you then.

So kind of just following in line with best practices.

So I have a question on that topic then, and I'm regretful we don't have a settlement for attorney. Generally speaking, I guess the answer is no, but since we have required and we are removing the requirement, then, you know, in lawsuits when they occur, they tend to go for the deep pockets. No single-family home is going to be the deep pockets we're going to be the deep pockets. The question is, do we anticipate any liability occurring to us? Do we find no liability exists and we find ourselves in an awkward position of drafting and providing settlements for people because we just don't want to litigate?

It's too expensive. What's the actual risk structure here? Because it certainly sounds like a risk— risky mess to me.

Matthew. I would have to defer to somebody from the 7th floor. Um, I don't think as the licensing authority, um, proving some action or failure to act under such a fact pattern, proving our liability as a licensing authority, um, seems unrelated in this case. But I don't have a I would have to defer to the Seventh Court that defends those kind of actions. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So to follow up, so you said that people are removing the requirements from places in the states, that's kind of becoming the new best practice.

I guess my question is, in those places that are removing it, have we seen any examples of a child being injured and What happens from there? Who goes bankrupt? You know, who has to cover that? Does that child get medical care? And so I think that we really have to consider that because ultimately I think that, you know, our job is to make sure that the children in these care centers are safe.

Yeah, and we can, um, we can get with some Florida people and get back to you. Thank you.

Jessica from 7th, from the Vermont Law is on the phone. I should try to unmute her. Jessica. I'll wait for her to answer. Sure.

Jessica, if you are available, great. I just got a note from you that you are the one, so if you're there— Hello.

I mean, sure. I can really affirm what John already said in terms of this is a business decision. For providers and facilities, one that the state has never required and that we've gone above and beyond requiring it as a policy decision. And I would point to, with regards to municipalities' liability on licensing issues, Alaska Statute 965.070, which provides some protection against any liabilities against the state on issuance of a license. Um, so that, as you know, in matters of risk, there's always risk, and I can't make any promises about how people will pursue claims.

Um, but that the requirement of the municipality for insurance is what, what the policy decision, and not based on a state requirement, right? The municipality licenses childcare centers within the municipality. The state licenses childcare centers outside of the municipality, and childcare centers outside of the municipality are not legally required to have insurance. That is the decision, um, that the facilities make themselves. Thanks.

So did you have a follow-up? No, no, no.

Just wanted to share anecdotally, um, I've done quite a bit of work recently in the child care space, and I think there's two realities you need to be aware of. One is children get hurt, um, and they get hurt whether they're at a licensed child care facility or in their front yard, and that's just sort of the reality of childhood. And I think that, I think that there are, uh, there are risk mitigation factors that are already in place for any licensed child care facility that don't have anything to do with the insurance side of things that have to do with risk management. And concurrent with that, there's also very frequently a pretty extensive waiver outlining, you know, what parents are willing to take responsibility for, what, what sorts of injuries might fall outside of what is considered normal for a toddler who's running around falling over. Um, and I think we need to think that into account as well, is, you know, insurance is only one piece of the risk and liability equation, and, and to require insurance is very different than recommending insurance.

I also think we need to keep in mind that the availability of care is a critical piece of this equation, and, and this is a significant barrier for many home-based providers because it is so incredibly difficult to find an insurance company that will cover home-based child care. So, and this cuts across— I mean, this isn't just an Alaska issue, this really is a my issue. And so by requiring insurance, we are creating a de facto cap on how many home-based providers we can actually have in our city. And when I say that we're at a crisis point in terms of the supply of child care, we really are. So I hear the concerns about child safety, child welfare— obviously that is top of mind.

I also think that we need to trust providers and trust that people who are doing this as a profession to be able to make that decision for what makes the most sense for their particular center. Uh, no, that is— Martinez, right? This is 125, and I do have one follow-up to that. And kind of recognizing all of those patterns of concerns with 25% reduction, parents struggling, is there a reasonable expectation among parents that insurance is going to exist in that space? And is there— maybe then there's notification requirement that goes in.

This is not an insured facility, or this is an insured facility, because I think parents do reasonably expect that the place they take their kids to is going to be safe and have some form of insurance. Just kind of assumed. I wonder, maybe that creates a stigma, I don't know, but if there's no notice, no communication, maybe there's just a communication campaign that is run at a third party or dependent or abstract to the specific operator. Anyhow, I just wonder if there is a reasonable expectation that this will be insured in the next 20, 25 years. Anyhow, that's not enough to stop me from supporting this project, but it certainly is a question.

Probably be defeating the scope. There's no one else, so I'll go ahead. Okay, thank you.

Uh, okay, so this is next one. Uh, so the next couple of code changes, uh, proposed code changes is, uh, the 4 that are listed up here: increasing capacity from 6 to 8 during the provisional year, increasing ratios for school-age care, removing the minimum age of 6 weeks for enrollment in a center, and removing the requirement to have a minimum of 2 caregivers present at all times children are present. So this is This is the piece that is in code, and so that is highlighted there in yellow is what we are looking at changing.

And so what are the benefits? So right now we are wanting to increase overall capacity per state. [Speaker:DR. BETHANY BRAY] I was just looking at this and wondering, is there any appetite or ability to change the 19 36 months to, uh, Inc. Rather than 6.

That's a state requirement, so the municipality does not have the ability to change that. Okay, we can change the other two because we exceed what the state does. Okay.

Um, okay, so increasing overall capacity from 6 to 8 during the licensed home first year, which allows for potential more spaces for families while providing the administrator with the option for up to 8 children. It's not a requirement to care for more children, but an option that they currently do not have. And this aligns with our state of Alaska partners. Increasing school-age ratios, uh, was in place in 42 facilities who utilize school age variants for the '24-'25 school year. In the first year of ASC schedule changes where facilities have utilized high school, high school students who now are not able to arrive until an hour after elementary school release, this will have flexibility with the ratios at supported facilities and allow for additional space for families to secure care for the age range.

This aligns with our State of Alaska partners. Currently we have 34 school age only centers with 9 additional all-day centers that also provide school-aged care. By removing the minimum age of 6 weeks, this allows centers to potentially meet more parents' needs, as not all parents have parental leave and must return back to work prior to an infant being 6 weeks of age. Spaces for age range fill quickly in homes, leaving parents with very few options. By removing the requirement to have 2 caregivers on site, this allows centers and staff— based on their business needs knowing when a child will arrive and depart, and if it's more cost-efficient to have one approved adult and one caregiver on site rather than the requirements specifying that adults on site must be caregivers.

And so really what these four do is, uh, it really allows for more space and allows for more of the ownership and decision-making to be placed on the entities themselves.

Code change, uh, number 7 that we are looking at making is removing specific bathroom requirements that can be cost prohibitive. By removing the several specific bathroom requirements in centers, it provides for more opportunities for centers trying to open or for those wanting to remodel, as these requirements can be extremely costly. There would be no more separate adult bathrooms. An approved plan can be in place to for the shared bathrooms, approving sinks to be in the toileting area rather than requiring things to be in the classroom but outside the toileting area, and removing the wall height of a maximum of 42 inches for new or remodeled facilities. And again, this all aligns with our State of Alaska partners.

Um, so really, again, the bathroom, uh, when a new center opens or attempts to open, if pre-existing existing building that previously had child care, the new owner is required to come into compliance with this requirement. The building had not been previously met— that had not met previously as they were required, as they were grandfathered in. It is the same if an existing facility wants to make any changes to bathrooms. They must then come into compliance with this requirement and often requires extensive and costly remodeling. Currently, if a new owner takes over, the facility does not meet the requirement, the remodel is required and also is often cost prohibitive.

Um, it is the standard that's currently in place and can be very difficult to meet. Therefore, we are wanting to remove this requirement at this time.

Proposed change number 8 is amending language or requirements for playground inspections. Uh, really what this does is it consolidates playground requirements and clarifies when inspections would be required by certified playground inspector. Um, and so part section 1 up there is the new language, as the intent is to clarify when a certified playground inspector, uh, inspections would be required for initial installment or whenever changes are implemented to a playground. Current facilities are already aware of this requirement, and new facilities learn as they move through our licensing process. Sections 2 through 5 can be removed as the requirements are notated in state statute, which is 7 AAC 10.1060(i), and additional provisions for entities licensed to provide child care.

So what is next for the health department in our child care licensing? Um, so if these proposed changes pass, licensed facilities will have more autonomy to make business and financial decisions that are tailored to the individual need and business structure, reducing costs and stress, shortening the licensing process for new applicants, and easing requirements during inspections. This also increases ratios for school-aged care centers and overall capacity for homes in the initial year, which increases opportunities for revenue. Supporting facilities and remaining open and available to our community. Some community benefits that we see is potentially opening more child care spaces and centers for school-aged care, uh, by moving from the 1 to 10 to the 1 to 14 or 1 to 18, and potentially meeting infant needs more if younger infants can be enrolled in centers and in homes, increasing by 2 spaces in the provisional year for a maximum capacity of 6 8 at any one time.

This also has the potentiality of also adding available overall, um, with easier processes for new applicants to become licensed. Um, if this does pass, the child care team will immediately broadcast the updated changes to licensed facilities and update the child care program office at the state to get the changes incorporated into our new database inspections or inspection reports. Reflot those changes. Another thing that just— I mentioned earlier was that we would like to also have round 2 code changes, which would follow the same procedure. We would draft the changes, receive community feedback, engage with the ACE board, and then come to you all with those proposed changes.

And some of those were listed earlier in the presentation that I provided. And so we would be looking at additionally doing a survey in a year to see to see how did these changes fare within our community and really just trying to get a pulse on that, what that looks like one year after passage. I have a question for you. So that age change, the not restricting it to older than 6 months, what was the rationale for the 6 months, to the best of your knowledge, in the first place? It's 6 weeks.

Or weeks. Yeah. Okay. What's the rationale in changing it? No, what do you think the rationale was for having it in the first place?

I think at the time that that was a pretty common practice. This code was adopted, it was actually created and adopted in 2004. There was a large community committee that came together and created it. We had— Anchorage had never licensed homes until 2004, and we consolidated everything from homes centers and everyone AMC 1655. And I think that at the time, um, 6 weeks was kind of an industry standard.

Um, we're finding that because it's so limited with young children, and my first thought is, well, that's too young, do we really want to have to put them in care? No, parents don't want to have to put them in care at that age either, but it happens and a center has to wait. And if we—. In the state, the state doesn't have a requirement on this, so Center is kind of silent. They let the facilities make— the centers make their own choices.

Homes do not have this minimum age. It's only in centers, and they would have the option. They don't have to change it. They could remain at 6 weeks if they wanted to, but if they have a parent come to them, it would give them the option to say, yeah, you don't have to wait 12 weeks, we can take them. Thank you.

I don't know where the 6 weeks entirely came from, but I do think it was more of an industry standard.

More questions? Anything else you want to add? No, that's it. All right, then I'll just note for the record that we have AO 2025-17 before us, due on July 15th. It's an ordinance that would amend the municipal code, chapter 1655, chapter of the licensing code, to reduce burdens on licensed child care providers by repealing several sections.

So if there's nothing else, then that's the only work session of the day. It'll be— the administration has requested a work session on the 9th of July relating to kind of phase 2 of the conversation of 2025-74, 74-1. And so it hasn't yet been scheduled, but it has been requested. The clerk is working on looking at timelines to make that happen. And there are some discussions that have been happening about what the right time would what the date is on that day, the 11th, to host that meeting.

It's at least at this time scheduled at 1 PM. It could go later, but not much later, because as the administration has requested an executive session, that thing may take quite some time. So I think that's all that we have by way of calendaring. We don't have any work sessions next week, right?

Yeah, so next week is the 4th of July. No, but it could have been Wednesday or Thursday, you never know.

Committees are happening. I don't think any committees have been, um, stopped, but that's the question of the chair. And so at this time, so far, okay, CADC had already moved, and, uh, but I heard that, uh, Public Health and Safety is planning to go, but otherwise pretty quiet week next week for folks. And so the intent is to let people get out and have holidays, but as well, some of the staff will be released early on Thursday before the 4th. And so, um, for that, then you've got to get a few days away from us all.

So please enjoy. All right, thank you. We'll be here. Did you want to say something? I just want to say thank you to the Health Department for being so responsive to the shop tax distribution.

So I think there are a lot of providers who have been wanting these changes for a long time. So I just want to say thank you for your hard work putting all this together. I think that the industry is going to be really pleased. Thank you.