Editor:
Why should you vote for Henry Ingwersen to serve a third term in the Maine Senate for District 32, which includes Arundel, Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, and Lyman?
There are so many reasons, but I will focus on just one: child care.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend a morning with Henry as we drove around his district, putting up campaign signs to support his candidacy. I have known Henry for more than 30 years, as he was a teacher to my son at an alternative elementary school in Arundel. We have been good friends ever since.
During the few hours we had together, I asked Henry to help me understand what Maine was doing to help those in need during the child care crisis.
On the one hand, you have parents who need to work but cannot afford the cost of child care. On the other hand, you have child care workers who are underpaid while doing a job that is critical to the development of our children. And thirdly, you have child care centers that cannot afford to stay open due to the high cost of running their centers. This seems like a no-win situation.
I wasn’t fully aware that I was asking the right person the right questions.
As chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, Henry handles legislation and policy involving child care and daycare affordability. He let me know that, although this is a difficult time to raise young children, he has been “fighting the good fight.” He sponsored a bill this past year to improve Maine’s Child Care Affordability Program, making subsidized daycare more manageable for eligible Maine families and encouraging more providers to participate in the program. During his previous term, he helped support funding for child care workers’ wages to help retain employees, and this past term, he made sure that this provision was not cut.
But he let me know there is more work to be done. He hopes to be reelected to help make it easier for parents to find child care by establishing regional child care hubs, maintaining funding for Head Start, and making daycare affordable for child care workers. He also had more ideas to share with me about how to continue improving the child care dilemma.
Henry knows firsthand what this issue means. He now has twelve grandchildren, and he and his wife, Christine, have had to step in as caregivers to help their children offset the sky-high costs of child care.
I strongly encourage you to vote for Henry Ingwersen to serve a third term in the Maine Senate so he can continue working on the complex issue of child care, along with the other major problems we Mainers have to deal with on a daily basis.
David Strassler, Arundel
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