HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-27-26 Public Comment - E. Talago - Public Comment re_ Item H.1. 1-27-26 meetingFrom:Emily Talago
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Public Comment re: Item H.1. 1-27-26 meeting
Date:Tuesday, January 27, 2026 11:38:33 AM
Attachments:Public Comment CC 1-27-26 H.1.pdf
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Please accept the attached public comment for consideration by the City Commission.With gratitude,
Emily Talago
Mayor and Commissioners,
I want to start by acknowledging that childcare access is a real issue. Families are struggling.
Employers are struggling. That part is true. But I am deeply concerned by the framing and
assumptions embedded in this agenda item, parts of which read less like public policy analysis
and more like workforce extraction strategy.
To that end, I am asking for a more honest and complete conversation about both the data and
the policy objectives underlying this initiative.
The framing in the staff memo is almost entirely economic, treating parents primarily as labor
inputs whose value lies narrowly in workforce participation. Families are not mere economic
units. Parenting, caregiving, and running a household are real work. This work is unpaid, but it is
foundational to child development, family stability, and long-term community wellbeing.
Categorizing parents who care for children or family members as “nonworking” is not only
inaccurate, it is deeply disrespectful to labor that quite literally makes everything else possible.
I am also concerned about how supply and demand economics are being ignored in this
conversation. When labor supply is tight, wages and benefits should rise. When public policy
intervenes to subsidize childcare in order to expand labor supply, we should ask whether that
suppresses wages, allowing employers to keep compensation low while externalizing workforce
costs onto families and taxpayers. The City of Bozeman, as an employer, provides
comprehensive supportive benefits including 100 percent paid family health, dental, and vision
plans, 8 weeks paid parental leave, 15 paid vacation days, 12 to 13 paid holidays, 12 paid sick
days, pensions, and wages that are high relative to the local economy. That is what competition
for labor should be producing across the market. We should be lifting employment standards,
not building parallel public systems to compensate for their absence. Please consider: Is this
initiative really economic development, or just cost shifting with better feel-good branding?
Families should be making decisions about work and caregiving from a place of choice, not
financial desperation. A healthy community is one where parents can choose what works for
their household, whether that means both working, one staying home, or some hybrid
arrangement, without fear of falling behind economically. Any economic gains from dual-income
households should benefit families first, not primarily serve workforce participation metrics or
growth targets.
It is also worth acknowledging what the data itself actually says. The Montana Department of
Labor report makes clear that the dominant source of labor force “nonparticipation” is adults
over age 54, of whom 87 percent are retired. Parents ages 25 to 54 account for a much smaller
share. If this were purely a labor supply problem, we would get far more return on investment by
canceling retirement and closing golf courses. I assume we are not doing that because it would
be insane. But somehow coercing the remaining 13 percent of “nonworking” parents of young
children into the workforce is framed as pragmatic?
There is also an enormous body of research showing that stay-at-home caregiving fosters
secure attachment, emotional regulation, and long-term developmental outcomes by providing
consistent, emotionally available caregivers. None of that value is captured in these analyses. I
am concerned the data is entirely one-sided, quantifying only the benefits of outsourcing care
while ignoring the economic, social, and developmental value of in-home caregiving. Child
Connect’s website fact call-outs include “$295,000 lifetime earnings lost by women, on average,
due to child care barriers.” Applying even simple amortization math to statements such as this
should raise serious questions about long-term tradeoffs.
I support partnerships between families, providers, employers, and community leaders to
improve childcare access and work-life balance. But I urge the City to be careful not to invest
our commonwealth into infrastructure or policy around an economic trajectory that is actively
increasing family stress and instability, rather than alleviating it. Families are the smallest unit of
government in our community. The freedom to make choices about household roles should not
be accessible only to the financially privileged few.
Yes, elected officials have a responsibility to address acute needs. But please, do so without
reducing parents to productivity metrics, without erasing caregiving labor, and without treating
workforce expansion as a proxy for human flourishing.
Thank you for considering my perspective.
Sincerely,
Emily Talago
Bozeman Resident