OJAI : Meeting to Address Need for Day Care

Ojai Valley residents will have the chance to comment on the need for public-sponsored child care during a joint meeting tonight of the Ojai City Council and the board of the Ojai Unified School District.

The public hearing will allow local residents to discuss a children’s day-care center proposed for downtown Ojai.

The Ojai Redevelopment Agency has reserved $60,000 in its 1991-92 budget as seed money for the latchkey children’s center.

School district involvement in the project stems from a proposal that the facility be located on a 30,000-square-foot parcel owned by the district next to the park-and-ride lot on East Ojai Avenue.

A joint committee composed of council members and school board members has been studying the proposed center since January, Ojai City Manager Andrew Belknap said.

The committee’s first recommendation was to hold the public hearing, Belknap said.

“They felt it was necessary to hear from the community that there was a need for day care and that this was a thing the local government should get involved in before a whole lot of work went into the details of how it would work,” Belknap said.

The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Nordhoff High School cafeteria.