Countywide : Supervisors Order Study of Day-Care Issues

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously ordered county agencies to study whether future industrial and commercial developments can be required to provide day care for workers.

The board also called for a report on whether county regional parks could be leased to private companies as day-care centers during the week, when the parks have relatively few visitors.

In a letter to his colleagues, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said the county has a growing problem of inadequate child-care facilities, with only 3,636 licensed day-care spaces for 66,400 children under the age of 2 and only 36,291 spaces for about 137,000 children 3 to 5.

He noted that as the father of an 8-year-old in a family where both parents work, he and his wife have personal experience in the difficulty in finding adequate day care.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder congratulated Vasquez on his proposal and said that when she made essentially the same suggestion five years ago she could not round up the two additional votes required. Wieder said it appears that the time is now right for a day-care initiative.