B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Fighting for Your Future: Governor Hochul Announces Child Care Expansion Pilot Partnership With Monroe County as Part of[...]

Earlier today, Governor Hochul today highlighted the State's plan to partner with Monroe County, Dutchess County and Broome County in a new state pilot program to support counties in implementing additional child care options in their communities. This is all part of the Governor's $4.5 billion investment to deliver statewide universal child care and make New York State the best and most affordable place to raise a family. This pilot program includes an investment of $60 million in State funding, along with new investments from each of the three counties, as they expand child care access with a particular focus on serving children 0-3. The Governor also joined a ribbon cutting for The Irene Skalny Childcare Center, a new YMCA child care center in Penfield that opened in October with the help of over $1.5 million in state funding.

B-ROLL of the Governor visiting a classroom of pre-K students is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr has photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 I certainly can feel the warmth in this room on this very cold day. We're a little delayed because I had to give an extreme weather briefing over in our State's Capitol before I came here to put everybody on high alert. It's going to be cold outside - doesn't count unless you hear it from the Governor, I guess - so I needed to say that. But we're used to it as a fellow Upstater down the road from Buffalo. We're all one big community. We all have our affinities for sports fans. Not going there for those - it's still a little raw. I know - it's okay - but I'm so proud to be back in Rochester. This is a great community.

It is full of vitality and promise and opportunities, and so coming here is always a real thrill for me. And being the first mom Governor and first grandma Governor - I actually know how to play with kids. I'm very good at it. So I'm looking at what we saw in the room, and this is an extraordinary place. I walked in and said my three-year-old granddaughter would lose her mind in here.

There was someone - and I thought I'd love to sit down with her. And I walked in the room full of other three or four-year-olds and I thought, this is a beautiful gift to their families. A place this warm and welcoming and nurturing and you could tell it in the staff as well. The love that they have for their jobs was so evident to me.

So I love coming to a place like this and to actually do the ribbon cutting on our ability to work together with the YWCA, an extraordinary organization. I want to thank Ernie Lamour once again for his leadership of what he does system-wide here, but also the Irene Skalny Childcare Center. We'll be talking more about that, but this is such a great privilege to be back here.

I want to acknowledge that we have amazing elected leaders here. I travel all over, you have a very special team here. The voters have been very wise in selecting people like Adam Bello as your County Executive. Let's give him a round of applause.

Our Mayor of Rochester, Malik Evans - thank you, Malik Evans. Your Penfield Town Supervisor, Kevin Berry joined us as well. But also really important to me is to have strong partners in Albany. These are your advocates, this is the voice that you need and you have by having Senator Jeremy Cooney. I want to thank him for his leadership.

Assemblywoman Sarah Clark, Assemblyman Demond Meeks, Assemblymember Harry Bronson - I want to thank all of them as well, and all of our elected leaders who've joined us here today. Let's talk about childcare. Now, there was a time in my life when childcare was viewed as your problem, a family's problem.

You chose to start a family, figure it out. And I was living in Washington D.C. starting out a career - excited about our new lives. I had a job that I had dreamed about since I was much younger. When you're younger and you're a woman in the era I grew up in, you don't dream about being an elected official. You dream about being a staffer to an elected official someday. So I hit that goal when I was 26 because I had wanted to work for a Senator in Washington and I worked for Senator Moynihan. I loved what I did, it was challenging. I was able to represent my home state in a very different way in Washington. But a baby came along and a sister, son and a daughter, and I could not find childcare, could not find anything affordable, anything I trusted.

It was just being on my own, I had no family support system. They're all back home, and I literally had to walk away from that dream job. Now I've turned out okay, don't worry about me. I've gotten back on track, but at the time I didn't know. And we literally moved back to Western New York. A great decision back then when our kids were one and three and could take advantage of babysitting for free from my family members.

But also it was great to raise the kids here in Western New York to give them the values that I still carry with me today. But it was still a hard decision. My husband was working for the government. All of a sudden our paycheck went from a government paycheck - there were two government paychecks down to one, and I knew what it was like.

Loading up the back of the car was exercise - diapers and formula and all the things you had to buy for the babies and running out to the doctor appointments. And it was a lot when we didn't have a lot of money back then, and my parents gave us the greatest gift they could. You said you're never going to be able to go out again so here's a VCR machine. Okay. So we actually did fine - we did fine. But I know what it's like to go out and clutch those coupons in your hand and hope that you can make it go as far as you need to. I've been there. So when I think about families today and the struggles that literally a generation later for my kids having their babies, it's not any easier at all.

The government never stepped in, the private [sector] never stepped in. No one stepped in and said we understand that childcare is not just going to affect this family - it affects our businesses, it affects our economy because guess what? And maybe I'm the first person who realizes the only reason people need childcare is to go to a job.

When they're going to a job, they're not just supporting their family, they're supporting our local economy, and they're contributing and they're giving opportunities to others. So let's frame it that way. We all benefit when people who want to work can work. And especially our moms who have often been shut out of opportunities because of the burden fell on them.

A lot of single moms out there don't have any choice, and so life gets really hard. But the cost of childcare - I know the cost of living here. The average cost of childcare is $18,000 here in the Rochester area, the Monroe County area. That's 25 percent of the median income. So right off the bat, your mortgage, your rent over here.

The high cost of car insurance, that's another fight I'll talk back and talk about that another day. Groceries going up and up, but automatically off the top, you want someone to take care of your kids so you can work. It's 25 percent off the top - it just doesn't add up. Especially for a minimum wage earner who has to pay $18,000 for childcare.

That's one child, you might have to double that. So we know how hard this can be and like I said, I've lived this before. And I have worked hard with my partners in government to put us on a path to fully universal childcare in the State of New York. Now we have been building for this. You can't all of a sudden one day say it happened because you have to have the infrastructure to support it.

So for the last four years as your Governor, we've invested $8 billion in building the infrastructure. Doing the training, increasing wages for the workers, giving them bonuses, having more curriculum to train more early childhood instructors and teachers and childcare providers. We had to build that side of it.

We just did $100 million last year to have more bricks and mortar to help people retrofit their homes, building the capacity there. And also encouraging businesses to take advantage of tax incentives we have on the books now if you help your employees with childcare. I want to ramp that up and get more businesses to support that effort as well.

But it was literally not this year, but last year says we are on the path to universal childcare - and it's going to be very different across different parts of the state, and I'll explain why. But we've invested $6.5 billion in childcare subsidies. And let me tell you, when I first became Governor, you could get a subsidy if you earned I think it was families earning less than $57,000. A family of four, earning less than $57,000.

We increased it because I said, "Oh, I think we can help more people." Increased it to families earning $110,000 are eligible for these subsidies, and that caps the cost at $15 per week. We've more than doubled the number of children served by childcare vouchers, investing money in capital plans as I mentioned. And trying to figure out working with our regional economic development councils - and this was my idea because when I was Lieutenant Governor I used to come to every one of the meetings. I said, "A company comes to you, it wants support from the State, that's great - but what are you going to do for us and our community and your workforce?"

So we have tried to work as part of the process of allocating economic development dollars to have those questions raised, show us your plan. Now, you may have noticed last week we cut the ribbon on - I wish it was cutting the ribbon - the groundbreaking for Micron. Guess what they're already building before they did this. We said, "Great, 50,000 jobs, love to see it. I want to see more diversity in our tech workforce, in our semiconductor manufacturing."

Go into the City of Rochester and Syracuse and Buffalo, find your workforce there. But also they're going to build a childcare center on site. They're doing it right now, because that's exactly the leverage that we have and can and should be using to get them to do this. So we also invested from our economic development team. $1.9 million to be able to get this project underway. We got it completed and here we are today creating capacity for 42 more slots for children to come here. This is the foundation we need, and I'm really excited about this. What we're going to be doing - I'll explain the difference. People are saying, "Oh, it's all about New York City." New York City is at a very different place when it comes to childcare.

I'll tell you why. Because in 2015, they decided to have universal four-year-old and three-year-old programs. So when they're ready to take the next step, it's to go after the two-year-old population and then you work your way down. Upstate, now we have had incentives there, we've encouraged communities to do this. And right now about 75 percent of children who are eligible, already have available to them a four-year-old program. We're going to continue trying to get that to 100 percent, I want that done by 2028. That's one of my goals this year to get that commitment.

But then we have to do the three-year-old program, and then we work our way down to the two-year-old program. So we're just a little behind, that does not mean we're not investing a lot more Upstate in the subsidies and the vouchers - so people can get some relief when they're going to existing facilities. So do two different dynamics, eventually I want it to all end up in the same place, and that is my goal.

What we're doing here today is announcing that we've identified three counties across the State of New York where we'll invest $20 million per county with a local match of $2 million and jumpstart a program that I want to study intently of dealing with babies up to three-years-olds.

What does it take to service that population? Where are the gaps, what can we do? I want to thank Adam Bello for stepping right up and saying, "Yes, we're in for this."

So this'll pilot a network of community-based daycares to provide year-round childcare. So we have Monroe, Broome, and Dutchess Counties, and we'll be watching you closely to see how that works out and tell us what we need to do. Show us the path right here in Monroe County. We're going to be able to do that.

We're going to be - I also want to point out, we use Monroe County as an incubator a lot. We really do. And I've already looked, I checked this out. We've already allocated about $43 million in many areas that we've asked you to go first and pilot something - whether it's anti-poverty programs, the benefits, nursing shortages. So we're putting this on your shoulders because I know this is a place for ideas and can be turned into reality. So congratulations to Monroe County once again.

We will double down on the success of the subsidies and the voucher program. As I mentioned, $1.2 billion for communities across the state. That's a 40 percent increase from last year alone. That gets a round of applause. That'll put childcare in reach for tens of thousands more New Yorkers. And we'll support all of our communities to make sure that all of our towns and villages and cities are able to provide universal four-year-old programs almost immediately. It's so important to me because no matter where the children live, they need to step into kindergarten with having that foundation. That does not distinguish on the basis of education, but there'll be foundational objectives that every child is going to meet before they enter kindergarten, and that's how we start changing the outcomes for our children.

So we have to continue that effort and helping with childcare helps put more money back in parents' pockets. Make life a little bit easier, but we're going to continue doing what we've been doing. We've been focused on affordability for a long time and talking about how we can put more money back in people's pockets.

And as I mentioned, this year, we are tackling the sky high cost of auto insurance. Another big bill you have to pay at the end of the month. They just keep going up and up. We're going to focus on lowering utility bills - particularly these cold weather communities. And I want more housing that's affordable in our neighborhoods and we have to cut the red tape that's stopping that from happening. We've waited too long. Young people want to grow up here. They're born here, they're raised, they want to have their own kids here, but they can't find housing. It's not happening for them. They're going to go somewhere else. And that to me, is a tragedy.

So we'll make a real difference in people's lives. But let's get down to some nitty gritty for what else Monroe County got. We're investing - you heard it here - $300 million in projects for Monroe County in the city of Rochester. $300 million. Don't tell all the other counties. Can I keep it quiet? But I wanted to invest in your vision and deeply impactful projects and just one I'll single out - $75 million to begin the construction of the new High Falls Park in downtown. We invested in a study a few years back. We got the study done, and I'm not one who likes having studies get dust on a shelf. If it makes sense, we do it. So that's that commitment here, but also $225 million for transformational economic development projects that we will listen to the locality on what you want to see happen in the city and the region. So the Mayor and the County Executive are working together, and that's on top of $500 million of investments we've made in Monroe since I took office and money - you breathe new life into - we've invested in The Inner Loop North Transformation, the Riverside Convention Center, the Red Wing Stadium, strong Memorial Emergency Tower expansion.

But the truth is all that investment is great upwards over $800 million for those keeping score. And I do, and I'm sure the County Executive and the Mayor do, but we have made a real difference in something that is foundational to everything I'm talking about. If people are not safe, they're not going to want to go to a ball game or to come to the park, or come to restaurants downtown or to go to communities around the suburbs. They're not going to want to do it. And that fear permeated this community for far too long. I did so many events in the City of Rochester with the Mayor and the County Executive talking about how the state can be a partner to drive down crime, and we've done an incredible job. Since I took office in this area with $3 billion of investment statewide, but very concentrated in places like Monroe County, violent crimes have dropped 30 percent overall - 30 percent decline.

Shooting incidences are down 57 percent, shooting victims down 61 percent. But, whether people actually feel it yet or not, there is a lag time, right? There is a lag time, and I understand that people have that anxiety. It is real in many communities, but these numbers are so important because for a long time they were heading in one direction and now they're dropping dramatically. And that is a proof point that when we work together, we make the investments - we value our local law enforcement and support them. We can be in a position to launch this region into the whole better tomorrow. And I'm so proud of that. And we're going to continue these investments. We're going to make universal childcare - these transformational products.

So I'm saying this, I would not ever recommend someone bet against the future of the Finger Lakes Region because we are on fire here - we are on fire here. And I know that by the strong partners we have, the understanding of this region is that your Governor, who appreciates everything you do, and our elected leaders. But also the community partners and those who run incredible facilities like this - we are all together in making this the best place to raise a family, to get an education, to start a business and to live a prosperous life that you could have only dreamed of in the past. So that is my vision for the Rochester - Monroe County - Finger Lakes Region and all of you're part of making that become real.

Thank you very much everyone. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. And with that, before we cut the ribbon on this magnificent facility, let me welcome up our great County Executive, Adam Bello.

Contact the Governor's Press Office