No Reservations! I was born at a very young age

Cutting Medicaid reduces federal and state health expenditures in the short term, but causes significant, widespread economic damage. It leads to widespread job losses in the healthcare sector, plunges billions of dollars into medical debt, and decreases state and local tax revenues, often resulting in an overall shrinkage of state GDP. ]

Chabeli Carrazana at The 19th:

Tucked in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sprawling universal childcare plan is a little-talked-about milestone: In September, the city will open what appears to be the first free daycare for municipal workers in the country.  The center, called The Little Apple, is a pilot program that could prove to be a model for cities across the country that are childcare curious, but not ready to take the big universal swing.  Housed in a renovated space on the first floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan, home base for more than 2,000 city workers, the Little Apple will offer free care to the kids of full-time staff. All workers in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), a city government support agency, can also take advantage of it regardless of their work location. The center will be small — just 40 seats for children ages six weeks to 3 years old. To pay for it, the city budgeted about $1.5 million, or $35,000 per child.

“This is what Wall Street could call a good investment,” Mamdani said in a press conference announcing the new center. “We know that after housing, the cost of childcare is what is pushing working families out of this city.”  DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei told The 19th said the solution came about as a retention strategy, responding to the needs workers shared. In surveys, workers enthusiastically embraced the idea. One worker described access to free childcare as “life-changing.” That’s probably not hyperbole. Childcare affordability is a national problem that has only grown more acute. Childcare costs an average of more than $13,000 annually nationwide; in New York for an infant at a center it’s closer to $21,000 on average. Paying for a daycare now vies with housing costs as the top constraint on family budgets, so much so that some parents have had to move or drop out of the workforce. 

Cities, meanwhile, have been struggling to retain their workers since the pandemic. Benefits like childcare, which some cities and private companies have dabbled with, can help address the quality-of-life issues that are pushing workers out of jobs.  “This is a great time for us to sort of be thinking about: How can we make our jobs even more attractive to people and also retain the city workers that we have?” Kitasei said. “This is one piece of that puzzle.” 

Kitasei added that a “healthy” number of staffers applied for The Little Apple and the department expects to fill its 40 childcare seats. Anyone who doesn’t get a spot will be put on a waitlist.

[...] Several already have childcare centers in municipal buildings or for city employees, including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Grand Junction, Colorado, though none of them are free like New York’s. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the county school district and a local childcare center known nationally for creating stable childcare models have partnered to provide childcare for the children of teachers inside unused classrooms in schools. Boone County, Missouri, is building a childcare center exclusively for children of first responders.