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| Scarlet
Letters |
| How
Does Your Garden Grow? |
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Never
attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
--
Ambrose Bierce, 1800s |
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Mary provides day care in her
home for four children, plus her own three kids. She is licensed by the
state, provides an educational and nutritional program, is accredited by
two national organizations and has 12 years of experience.
Mary moves to Our Town. The
nightmare begins.
Before buying her home, Mary
looked up the subdivision regulations about at-home businesses. There was
nothing to prevent her from providing day care. She buys the house and
builds a fence to enclose her back yard, per regulations. She follows every
requirement, including applying for a special use permit from the city.
Her neighbors all sign a petition
in her favor. Most of them also write letters to the city council, as well
as the families for which she provides care. A statewide organization of
home-based child care writes an affidavit on her behalf.
But up on a hill, more than
a quarter mile away, there's a senior-citizen community. They don't want
day care in their neighborhood. "We're empty-nesters," they tell me. "We've
got a quiet neighborhood and we want it to stay that way."
Mary goes to the zoning board.
Only four of seven board members bother to show up for the meeting. Three
of them vote for her; one votes against, citing the concerns of the senior
citizens. She needs a majority of the full board, not just "the ones that
showed up," so she loses on one vote.
After the hearing, one of the
parents approaches the senior citizens and says she thought they'd been
fed bad information. They had complained that the day care kids were making
noise, running around in the streets and riding bikes through their community.
The parent points out that the kids couldn't be running around and riding
bikes through their neighborhood, they were babies and toddlers, incapable
of riding bikes. She has no effect.
"I don't think you understand
how hard it is to find child care," she says.
The older lady facing her says,
"Well, I stayed home to raise MY children and I think ALL women should."
How can one argue with such
logic?
Mary appeals to the city council,
and that's when it hits my desk. I have to fight down my inclination to
scream in the air, because I know she's going to lose. I do the story,
making sure to present both sides, and twist myself into a pretzel trying
to keep my opinion out of it.
I think I do fairly well. The
only email comes from someone saying the woman's permit was for eight children
plus the three of her own. This person is so totally wrong I don't even
bother responding; it would be illegal under the state laws to have that
many, to say nothing of the city's requirements. "This biased reporting
has to stop," the email reads.
I watch Mary begin to cry as
she pleads with the council. "I don't understand," she says. "I did everything
right."
Yes, she did. But the council
turns her down anyway. "We have to respect the rights of people who choose
to live in R-1 zoning," says The Fossil Councilman.
But the fact is, it's
Mary who lives in R-1 zoning. The senior citizens live in a planned community.
Actually, if Mary lived in the seniors' community, she wouldn't need a
permit to run her day care center.
The parents are stunned, standing
on the steps of City Hall. "How can they do this?" one of them asks me.
Because they're government.
I've seen it all a thousand
times, but almost never has it affected me this much. I've had my child
in day care centers, in licensed home centers, in unlicensed baby farms
where the children are turned, fed and watered - but not loved. Day care
providers like Mary are rarer than green rubies.
When the council voted, the
senior citizens applauded, then got up and walked out. "So the old farts
win," said a parent.
That's perhaps an unkind turn
of phrase, but it is true. Senior citizens have an undeniable pull in our
society. They are more likely to be retired, and have an ethic of civic
involvement that belongs to an earlier generation. They write letters to
the city council and the newspaper. They show up at meetings and speak
their minds. They vote.
Consider the bizarre conundrum
of Washington's attitudes toward the age brackets. Why is health care for
senior citizens - Medicare, prescription drug benefits, Social Security
- considered sacrosanct, while health care for children and educational
support for low-income kids is "not the business of the federal government"?
Because senior citizens vote.
By this point, I'm afraid to
send a copy of this week's column to my grandmother. See, my generation
was raised to respect our elders. But the elders of this town were stopping
children in the streets to ask them if they came from "that woman's day
care." It's frightening.
"What does it say when the children
are being frightened by the very people we teach them to respect?" cried
a parent.
It always gets bound up in "property
values" and "nuisance ordinances." What it really means is, "We don't want
those
people there." Property values were used to keep out blacks and Hispanics
in previous generations. Now they're used to prevent at-home businesses
and -gasp- children.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?
Not in our town. |
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Column Credo:
I'd be sitting in a restaurant and someone
would come up and say, "I don't like your column on this or that." I'd
hand him 35 cents. That was what the paper cost then. The refund on the
product. He'd get upset. Well, that's one attitude I have. Today,
it's half a buck. What can you buy for half a buck? Do I owe them something
that will be worth reading a hundred years from now? I don't think so.
Do I owe them something of the quality of Mark Twain? Naaa. Not for 50
cents.
I guess what I owe them is that when I
write something, it's what I think. No editor told me to write it. I'm
not doing it because the Tribune editorial page will like it, or not. So
they can be quite sure that they're getting what I think at the moment.
-- Mike Royko
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