Boulder drafts child care building agreement

The city of Boulder plans to retain ownership of the building it purchased and relocated from north of Helena to Boulder last year with the goal of providing a facility for affordable child care, and the city now has a draft plan for how it hopes to manage building maintenance and costs depending on the success or failure of an eventual child care operation in the space.

At the first City Council meeting of the year, on Jan. 18, Council President Drew Dawson presented a “draft concept paper for … the future of what we’re going to do with Southwest Montana Youth Partners,” a nonprofit recently formed by the child care working group that Dawson chaired, which itself was spun off from the Boulder Transition Advisory Council with the goal of bringing affordable child care to Boulder. Dawson prefaced the presentation by telling Mayor Rusty Giulio and the council that he serves as a director for the nonprofit and would recuse himself from voting on any issues before the council that involve Southwest Montana Youth Partners, including the draft.

“We’re getting Southwest Montana up and running. It’s not a quick process to get a nonprofit corporation up and running and get them into a position to accept money and contract with someone, and get a building up and running,” Dawson said, explaining that the nonprofit’s goal is to find a child care provider that will establish a licensed child care operation in the building, which the city purchased using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from Jefferson County.