At the Wright County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, Sandy McGrath gave the weekly COVID update for the county. The current overall case counts sit at 1,245, up a little over 100 since last week. McGrath said there was a little dip in cases due to some testing locations and labs being closed over Thanksgiving. She is anticipating cases to bump up next week as holiday cases appear. McGrath said she will be testing staff at Belmond-Klemme and Eagle Grove schools in the next week. Chairman Dean Kluss encouraged McGrath to reach out to Clarion-Goldfield-Dows’ administration again about testing as it is not planned yet there.
McKinley Bailey, Executive Director of Building Families, appeared before the board to discuss childcare worker recruitment and retention bonuses. Bailey emphasized that there is a childcare crisis across Iowa that extends into Wright County. He said, “We are in a situation where we cannot staff our childcare centers to run at full capacity.” He noted, in Wright County, Eagle’s Wings in Eagle Grove is running at about 50% capacity and Kids Korner in Clarion is about 2/3. Bailey said the issue is that centers cannot pay employees enough to retain them. This problem has an overall adverse effect on the county’s workforce as parents cannot find adequate childcare and thus choose not to work in the county.
Building Families is hoping to implement a program in Wright Co. similar to what has been done in Polk County. This would include paying workers at childcare centers a sign-on bonus of $150 for part-time and $200 for full-time and a quarterly bonus. Bailey explained that the program was successful in Polk County at reducing turn-over rates in centers. He is hopeful it could work for the county’s two daycare centers (and would eventually include the planned center in Belmond).
Bailey’s ultimate purpose was to ask the board to consider contributing funding to the program. He said the program in Wright County would require just over $11,000 for the second half of 2021 to run and about $38,600 for 2022. He noted that the Hamilton County supervisors had recently committed to giving $20,000 over the next 18 months to the program in their county. He also explained that he already has meetings scheduled with Wright County businesses to discuss private contributions. Building Families will be adding funds as well. The board seemed interested in the program though they will have to discuss where that money would fit in the county’s budget. They promised to get back to Bailey.
In other business, the board approved the Annual Urban Renewal Report for June 30, 2020. Auditor Betty Ellis explained that this report is due every year by December 1. The report states that as of June 30, 2020 the county has $19,235,902 in outstanding TIF money that is owed. Projects covered in this fund include the Wind Farm, Prestage and ReNewTrients.
