The fate of Auckland's publicly-owned early childhood centres hangs in the balance as parents plead for councillors to retain community ownership in tomorrow's vote on Wayne Brown's final budget proposal.
The mayor's final budget, released last week, retains the proposed cuts to the council's 10 ECE centres, which currently care for around 350 children.
Last December, Brown proposed saving $1 million by having the council withdraw from running the centres, known by their brand Kauri Kids, as officials looked to find ways to close the organisation's $325 million budget deficit.
1News spoke to three parents outside of a North Shore Kauri Kids centre earlier today, who opposed the cuts as they could be "devastating" to their children's development.
If the council withdrew from being a direct provider, individual council centres could be closed or instead sold to a commercial player.
One mother, Jessica, said her local centre in Glenfield offered flexibility that she felt couldn't be matched by private providers and that there would be major disruption if closures were on the table.
"My kids would be devastated not to see their friends, not to have their most important relationships in their life besides their parents. It would be a travesty for us, really."
Sarah, another mother, told 1News that the uncertainty about whether their local centre could be shut or sold was "devastating" and "heartbreaking" for parents.
Kaipātiki Local Board member Paula Gillon said she believed the council-run centre in Glenfield offered benefits as compared to privately-owned ECEs.
"What it does is it allows women who can't go back into the workforce full-time and therefore use full-time daycares, to actually take up part-time work, to do some contracting, working from home or upskilling," she told 1News.
"It gets women who otherwise would not be going back into the workforce back into the workforce earlier. Kauri Kids is incredibly important for women within our community."
Jessica said she counted herself as one of those benefitting from the non-commercial nature of the council-run centres.
Kauri Kids runs at a loss of around $200,000 every year.
"It has helped me get on my feet. I wasn't planning on going back to work so soon, and they made it just easy, and I felt secure. My children have felt safe, so it's meant everything to me," she said.
"They would accept the WINZ form that I needed them to fill in, whereas other centres were refusing to do that. I only wanted two days a week, short days, and private centres didn't want that."
Another mother, Grace, said she had already been through an ordeal trying to find an ECE centre that would be suitable for her child.
"She's one of those Covid babies, so she's only seen me and my husband. She hasn't seen anyone else. We've tried more than 10 centres before we landed in Kauri Kids, and she would just cry and cry and cry," she said.
"This is the only place I trust, and she really loves coming here.
"For struggling people like us, this is an investment. It's not an expense to be cut. This place is more like a second family to us.
In the council's consultation for the budget, around 14% of written submitters specified opposition to the proposed cuts to early childhood education.
Ratepayers are currently subsidising approximately $3000 annually per enrolled child, according to a figure released by Brown's office last year.
"The primary opportunity is for council to reduce operating losses from this activity and earn a commercial return on the lease of the premises," staff advised Brown at the time.
Last year, one early childhood education expert advocated against the closure due to the loss of the community-run option in the Auckland market.
Gillon opined that big-ticket items like selling the council's airport shares had dominated the debate over the budget — to the detriment of the 350 children at Kauri Kids.
"Councillors haven't had the adequate time and energy to actually really look at this decision, and look at all the research and the impacts of it."
In staff advice, officials wrote that: "The ECE market in Auckland is well-established with over 1400 centres and in some areas the market is saturated or is facing staffing shortfalls that could benefit from provider consolidation.
"The service can likely be delivered by other providers more efficiently than the council."
Wayne Brown's office has been approached for comment this afternoon.
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