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New York City Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, who represents District 34 in Brooklyn, spoke to News 12 about universal child care.

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Marcelino News 12. It looked pretty fun right there and don't forget every Thursday we feature some of the awesome getaways that are just right around the corner in your neighborhood. You can catch road trip close to home every Thursday night at seven o'clock and then again at 930 right here on News 12. All right, let's fly over to another fly person. Our fly meteorologist right there, Alex. Kama. Alex. What do you got for us? Thanks. Hi. Well, I don't want to burst your bubble. So we're going to start talking about good stuff. We've got mild weather with highs in the fifties and cloudy skies. Yes, but it is dry today. So those are the good things about this weekend. Unfortunately, tomorrow, if you have plans, you need the umbrella to join you back as the special guest. We've got plenty of rain coming our direction. Tomorrow, temperatures are nice all afternoon actually. Really by mid morning we're heading mid f there is some of this low cloud cover and fog lingering for the early morning. I do think that clears out by lunchtime highs today hit close to 60 if you are heading into midtown, you just might hit 60 same out there on Staten Island. But here in the Bronx, we're expecting temperatures to be just a bit below that. You're in the forties and close to 50 overnight tonight. So that's a mild feel, but it does come with showers starting around nine or so. And then a widespread rain pretty much all day Sunday especially. It looks like the morning time right now that east breeze feels gross. Let's time it out for you. You see again pretty cloudy tonight, but mainly dry until around midnight. Midnight is light shower activity and then it becomes a steady moderate rain for Sunday morning. So you need the umbrella, you need to use the windshield wipers and you just need your patience too. If you're walking around outside in the mid morning on Sunday, it is just a soaker. Look at the yellows and oranges. This is some solid, pretty steady rain. This is two o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday. It doesn't clear out until about 56 o'clock. So the whole day time it's gloomy and it's miserable. It's a guarantee it's going to rain and then we are dry for the work week. So that's good news. Unfortunately, we don't want to talk about the work week on a Saturday. We'll do it anyway though. We're expecting temperatures to drop into the forties on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then we are bogging out Thursday morning, start of Hanukkah. Things start to warm up into next weekend. So a little bit of an improvement there with another chance of rain.

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First full weekend of December officially upon us, but it doesn't really feel like it out there at all. Was that 60 degrees for Saturday? Really nice. Can't complain a little wet though today. Yeah, it was a little wet a couple of hours ago, but at least we got some dry conditions to kick off the weekend. That will be quickly changing by Sunday. Here's what you can expect. Waves of rain starting Saturday night into Sunday night. So that's going to be a long duration storm where we are expecting rounds of rain, steady rain with a few downpours possible. So you're gonna have to watch for some puddles ponding on area roadways. And if you live somewhere that has poor drainage, you're probably going to see some more of that localized flooding. In terms of tomorrow morning, we're starting off chilly. Temperatures near 46 degrees areas of fog will be to move into our area. It will lift and clouds will still be with us throughout the afternoon with temperatures topping out near 58 degrees muted sunshine. So not seeing that sunshine that we like to see, but at least it's going to remain dry. During the evening, it is still going to remain dry with clouds, but showers do arrive late after midnight. That's where we start to see some of that wet weather pushing through. But at least we got these unseasonably mild temperatures. Our average high 49 degrees. We're not going to see the forties until the midweek. And that's also where we start to see there. I say some festive flakes returning back to our area. But in the meantime, let's just enjoy the dry weather. So some clouds and fog to start our Saturday, it is going to remain dry throughout the day. Temperatures will be topping out near 58 degrees and we got some rain.

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Power & Politics: Council Member Gutiérrez on universal child care

Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us this week for the latest edition of Power and Politics here on news 12 where local matters. I'm Amanda Bossert Universal Child Care. It's an idea that some lawmakers on every level of government have brought up more than once in more than one form. But it's never come to fruition. But in new york city, the city council moved a step closer, this october passing a package of bills that some say could lead to Universal child care within five years, something no other city has done. So joining us this week to discuss this further is one of the sponsors of this bills in this package and a new mom herself. We're talking to Brooklyn council member, jennifer gutierrez and council member, thank you so much for being with us. Congratulations. We are happy to have you here on power and Politics. And I'm sure motherhood provides a new perspective and adds more importance to this issue for you. 100%. And thank you Amanda thank you for for covering this 100%. I mean this was something that I cared about deeply because of my community, because of the people that I was representing. You know, my mother and many, especially women and immigrant women. My mother was a child caretaker. And so it was just so important to strike while the iron was had as a majority first women council. This is something that impacts women. We know more than more than any other gender. And we just wanted to make sure that it was a conversation. So yes, it's compounded now because I am a first time mom. But it was something that was always so personal to me for those reasons. Can we expand upon that just a little bit? Why did you feel it was so important that you and your fellow lawmakers come together now, as you mentioned in this majority woman council and work so hard on this package of bills to set the stage for universal childcare here in our city. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think on the surface, anybody in the neighborhood realizes that there are families and their Children and that they start school at around five years old. But what happens before then? And what happens to to working parents and caregivers before, you know, before mandated if there's three PK in the neighborhood. Great. But what happens and then what we learned was coming out of the pandemic was that um any of the challenges that that working moms and caregivers had before were like I said earlier compounded. We also know that women um in a lifetime will lose close to half a million dollars because they are being forced to make tough decisions of whether going back to work or staying at home because child care is so expensive. Um and then coming back from the pandemic, if the number one focus is economic recovery, well, economic recovery is ensuring that every single person that contributes to our economy can do that um can have the peace of mind that they are leaving their Children with um equality and safe provider to be able to go back to work and to our economy. So those were conversations we were having having as colleagues um and led obviously by our our speaker Adrienne Adams. Um and so I think all of those things is what made it so important and we have for the first time, we have a lot of first new moms. I I am one, but we also have council member julie juan and council member Lorena Sanchez that we were all pregnant and had a baby um while first, you know, initially elected. And so, um we have those conversations all the time and we're really lucky to be mentored by Some of the moms already on the council. But honestly, we were met a lot of times with the conversation of childcare amongst our colleagues. Like, yeah, it's tough and it's 20, and if we continue to talk about it and we're not doing anything about it, then we are just not doing our job. Um so really the conversation came about because I think we are tired of not having options. Um and and really tired of asking people to continue to do more with less resources. It's great to be able to bounce off those ideas with your colleagues and then be able to take action. So diving into the details a little bit more here. Your bill establishes a marshall plan for moms, if you don't know when a marshall plan is, it dates back to World War Two. So we mean business here for this purpose. It would be a task force to come up with the best way to help working moms and caregivers. Can you explain that a little bit further? Absolutely. Um so the the original marshall plan obviously was an economic recovery plan and we're looking at child care as not just child care, but it's it's an economic recovery plan. And so the the idea for the marshall plan bill um did not come from me. It was introduced at the last session but did not go through and I think it's because you know, there's so much energy behind it now and the speaker of course that we were able to, but the idea behind the task force is to really look at the last five years. The pandemic obviously is going to be a focal point. But looking at the last five years, what are some of the challenges that caregivers moms, dads, aunties, whoever it is have when it comes to child care. Um Are there resources? Is there available centers near where people live? Is it affordable? What does affordability look like? Um And the task force, I think I'm really proud of it because it really is not is a very, I think intention task force of representation. We have some heads from specific agencies which of course, you know, makes sense. Um so we have the heads of the city's Department of Social services, department of Mental Health and hygiene, department of Education, labor and we also have, you know, a parent who has a child enrolled in a public school, we have a teacher, we have a principle, we have an actual child care provider that are going to be on the task force. And so we want to make sure that we're being representative and all encompassing of the different scenarios. Childcare looks different in different communities to different cultures. And when we have a conversation about universal child care, it really has to be universal. It has to be about every single family, every single child documented or not. Um and so that we're hoping that the task force will look at the five years will have recommendations made by this advisory board. Um and then the council have what it needs to really start making policies and supporting initiatives that are really going to jump start our economy and finally support women in the workforce. Yeah, it seems like an important platform to bring all those voices together and then be able to build on that. You talked about working moms earlier, you are a new mom, but also a working mom in the council. Have you run into many of the problems that you're trying to address with your colleagues with this legislation? Yeah. You know, and I and I say this knowing full and well that I'm coming from a place of privilege as an elected official. I'm really lucky um that if I need to work from home that I can do that. Um but also just being a new yorker, the challenge of childcare, I was on a waiting list for months, right? I live in a neighborhood where unfortunately so many of our daycare centers had to close because they just could not survive during the pandemic. Um and so and those are challenges that those are conversations that I'm having with my colleagues with public advocate Germany Williams just the other day. You know, he's like, oh I find I got my kid into daycare. She was on a waiting list. Um and so I come I come to it knowing that I, you know, I have a lot more flexibility, but the reality is is that women and caregivers in the workforce need a lot more support. It's not just the notion of being able to bring your child to work because that now you're doing too right now, you're doing your job and and the child care. Um but being flexible when it comes to childcare making accommodations, you know, the hours, the traditional hours we're under, we're seeing that it's just not serving the same amount of of working parents, right? The reality is that we also need daycare facilities that are open after six p.m. Weekends overnight. Um that those are the kind of jobs that a lot of working parents are taking now and and we need to understand need to make informed decisions about what that needs to to look like but but some of the challenges that are real like like every other parent um and it's and then if you have a child in daycare, you know as soon and if that child gets its first fever, they cannot go to daycare. So then you have to, what's your plan b right? And it's a challenge. You know, unless you have a job that's flexible, you can bring your child to work, you are calling out of work and if you work somewhere that does not recognize, you know paid sick time off, you're losing money because those are the challenges and those are conversations that we're having and so you know um I couldn't have predicted that I would have been so lucky to to lead the marshall plan um as a new mom. But I'm so lucky because it really has informed me so much and hopefully those are all avenues that the task force can then explore as well. We talked about the task force, I know you worked alongside council members Hudson and men and to put this package of bills together. What are some of the other highlights in the other bills that people need to know about. Yeah and so I'm really proud. I'm really lucky to have worked with with both council members Hudson and men in because you know, they come from that that same like we need to make informed policies, right? Um, so some of the other bills include um, um public information just making it more accessible to folks. So every neighborhood and every family will have a sense of, you know, a local daycare in their, in their community will have a sense of all the subsidies. What we know is that there if there are city and state subsidies oftentimes they don't talk to one another. Um, and the average new Yorkers, you know, it doesn't make a difference where it's coming from. They just want to know that it's subsidized. So another bill includes making sure that that information is public that you as a family member, you have a sense of what are the subsidies you qualify for in one location. You don't have to go trying to navigate multiple sites. Um also including a child care task force that I think will work hand in hand with the marshall plan to understand, you know, what are some of the challenges so that we can get to universal child care. Um, and then I believe another one is a directory of childcare, which I mentioned before. Um, so unfortunately we kind of have to do the concept of Universal child care in a little bit of a fragmented way, but I think it's going to be really strong because it will be so informed. Um, and it will center the people that are the most impacted. So I'm really proud about that and obviously looking ahead to set the stage for Universal child care. But I know that there some issues with the system as it stands currently. You talked about the wait list. I know that you were at a rally talking about day care workers who weren't getting paid recently. We've talked about centers that are closing suddenly. How do we rectify what's not working right now in the system as well? Yeah, I mean, I think we always have to start with the people that are the most impacted. I come from the solution is the best. It's coming from the people that are the most impacted. Um, the issue with the rally is that we've seen a lot of our day care providers and centers primarily from two and under that are contracted with the city are not being paid on time. The city moved throughout the pandemic transition from contracting with a CS two D O E. Um, and that has not come without its challenges. And so while we were rallying is a, you know, we get paid on time, they deserve to get paid on time and be the reality is that the majority of people filling these roles, the majority of people not getting paid on time are black brown and immigrant new Yorkers and we have to call that out because it is inequitable and these are people that are keeping our Children safe are educating our Children. We have to really recognize providers as educators as well. Um And so the rally is really calling out the bureaucracy the backlog of really what seems like administrative work to be able to trigger on time payments for our daycare providers. Um and if you think about it, it really hurts our our daycare centers not just because they're not getting paid on time, but they can't retain good providers. You know, it's hard to sell a job at an interview and saying you might get paid on time, please work with us. And so that was really why we were rallying together. Um the notion of daycare centers closing has a lot to do with this backlog, but also the city is not supporting these childcare centers throughout the pandemic, A lot of them had to close and stay closed. So um you know, our goal is really to identify daycare desserts and not one of the many task forces will hopefully do that, but we really have to be serious about pay parity for these workers. We have to be serious about facility and infrastructure space. Um and we really have to be serious about treating these people with the dignity they deserve so that our communities can truly thrive. It's a multi layered issue and already work being done in the council to set the stage for what's to come. Council member with the erez, thank you so much for being with us here today. Thank you so much.

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