By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The conclusions drawn by the Reno County ARPA task force are important, but it's equally as important to keep the whole community at the table, even as the governing bodies wrestle with how best to use the funds, even if they do choose to use the bulk of them for child care.
"As a part of the task force, I was really impressed with the outcomes of the numbers," said Calvin Wright with the NAACP. "They reflect very closely, the census of the demographics of both Reno County and Hutchinson. Often times, there's a set of folks that are excluded from those discussions and you just get one perspective. One of the directives of the Treasury Department was very clear, that we should have a mindset of inclusion and the task force kept that in the forefront, right from the time they started selecting folks."
Part of the issue is not only being sure communities of color are heard, but that rural and urban needs are both met.
"It's going to be critical that whatever solutions are put in place to address child care in Reno County are available to everybody in the county," said Jackson Swearer with Start Up Hutch. "When we say that, we're talking about inclusion across all sorts of demographics including the geography of where people are. We've got to make sure that what we do is also helping folks out in Arlington and in Sylvia and in Turon and out by Fairfield, as much as it's helping the people in Hutchinson, as well. We know two-thirds of the population in the county, roughly, is located in Hutchinson. That's where a lot of the folks in the county are, but that means that there's a third of the folks in the county who aren't in the city of Hutchinson."
One thing that will be key is to place whatever solution comes in areas where all economic levels can have as equal of access as possible, which can be a challenge, given the inherent costs of child care.
The ARPA task force will present its findings to the Hutchinson City Council on Tuesday.