Aging, Children and Youth, & Legislative Affairs- House
Video
Transcript
1 document
Bills discussed (2)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
HB1997
· 3 mentions in agenda, transcript, chapter
Matched: “…ke Rep. Glenn Barnes REGULAR AGENDA Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1997 Torres TO CREATE A ZONING EXEMPTION FOR CHILDCARE FAMILY HO…”
|
TO CREATE A ZONING EXEMPTION FOR CHILDCARE FAMILY HOMES; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY. | Torres | Recommended for study in the Interim by the … |
|
SB340
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB340 A. Clark TO AMEND ARKANSAS LAW CONCERNING CERTAIN FEES, EXP…”
|
TO AMEND ARKANSAS LAW CONCERNING CERTAIN FEES, EXPENSES, AND COSTS IMPOSED ON A JUVENILE OR … | A. Clark | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin
- Processing date
- October 6, 2026
Speaker 1
0:00
House Bill 1997. Sounds like a good year. Representative Torres, if you will introduce yourself, you will be recognized.
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
0:18
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. State Representative Randy Torres, District 17. Am I good to proceed?
Okay. All right. So I want to begin by kind of giving you an introduction into a pilot program that we have established in Western Benton County. by an organization that I've been involved with and I'm on the board on with, and it's called Western Benton County Partnership. If some of you in Northwest Arkansas or even anywhere else
have ever heard of the Northwest Arkansas Council, this is the same thing, except it represents
Western Benton County, which is more of your rural
area of the county. So it's the same thing. So Western Benton County Partnership, you know, really understands that child care is such a big need, not just in our county, but across the state. And so we have been very fortunate to receive a grant back in October of 24 for almost $340,000 that was awarded by the Arkansas Community Foundation.
And with those dollars, we established six new in-home child care businesses. And they have successfully launched. And it created 60 new child care spots that were unavailable a year prior. You see how effective this is. Well, the latest is we have 10 that are signed up. And the next three will be onboarding in the next two to three months, okay?
This is all managed and regulated by the state, of course. So they're monitored
as far as how many children and so forth into these deals. So right now, we are looking at about 58 children. Most of these are licensed for up to 10. All but two are full.
So you can see the demand of this service that we have.
So the bill itself creates a targeted exemption from local zoning restrictions for licensed family child care homes, allowing them to operate in residential areas statewide, including within municipal limits. Why does this matter? Arkansas is facing a critical shortage of accessible childcare, especially in rural communities and small towns. In many cases, local zoning ordinances are preventing qualified individuals from opening licensed family childcare homes, even though there is a clear need and demand.
This exempts license or license-seeking family child care homes from local zoning laws that restrict them from operating in residential areas, applies the exemption to all residential properties inside city limits, preserves local authority to enforce health and safety regulations, ensuring community standards remain intact, so that doesn't change. And it requires the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education to support and guide providers to maintain high standards.
the child care crisis is urgent communities are struggling to grow and retain their workforce without adequate child care options existing zoning rules are intent unintentionally acting as barriers to small home-based child care businesses successful examples are in cities like gentry and gravite show that these barriers are removed child care availability increases without a negative impact on neighborhoods.
So in essence, that's really what this bill is about. I have
had a discussion with a friend of mine that is with the Arkansas Municipal League. I sent this to him. This is kind of an emergency urgent request, quite honestly, because we've got so much momentum. We don't want to stall out the results that we're getting. And anyway, I spoke with him, and I sent him the bill, and he looked at it. And he said, you know what?
He says, if this gets passed, it's not the end of the world. So I'll end with that and open
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
5:05
it up to any questions. Other questions by
the committee? Representative Barnes, you recognize. Thank you, Chair. Colleen Torres, you're wanting to allow these homes, I believe you said, that can keep up to 10
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
5:23
children? Well, thank you for your question. It all depends. Right now, currently, some of the homes are licensed for up to 10.
Okay. But that's managed through the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education folks. So if you have, my understanding is, and I don't know all the rules, but if you have an infant, you know, or infants, then that number can get bigger, you know, because they don't require as much handling as, you know, toddlers, so to speak. So they've got all that figured out. Okay. Follow-up.
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
6:00
And you're saying that they will be able to put these homes anywhere in any community without talking to the neighbors of those places that they may want to put those homes in?
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
6:13
It would relax the city zoning in a way that
would permit people to be able to have a child care, in-home child care service. Correct. One more question.
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
6:30
Was any mayors or anyone brought to the table asked any questions about
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
6:36
it? I have. I've reached out to the mayors like in Gentry. And then the other, of course, he was the former city administrator of Salem Springs.
And and they both said it's not the end of the world. There might be a better fix to this, but this at least gets us started. And if there are issues, I'm happy to come back and make some changes in the next session. Thank you. Representative Springer,
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
7:10
you're recognized. Good morning, and thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the concern about making available child care to citizens. I guess the question I would have is whether or not I live in Pulaski County,
and we may have different zoning requirements here. So does this bill do away with the requirements in Pulaski County with respect to child care facilities? And so it may be that a person could have a child care center for normally they would not be able to do so here in Pulaski County. Potentially, correct.
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
7:45
Of course, they would need to meet the standards of the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.
know, there's a lot of, it's not an easy thing to do. So it's not like we're going to, I don't see this scaling like big time. They're going to be like your short-term rentals where there's just all over the place. And most people too, I would, I would
say, you know, they have to have a calling to do this. And I would say there's probably not a lot
of people that are raising their hand to do this. Does that make sense? So I, if, if it were like a short-term rental kind of a thing where you're just relaxing zoning requirements, and then all of a sudden you just have this Wild West
result, then yeah, I would be apprehensive. But for this, I don't see this as being
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
8:36
that. Final question. So did you speak to someone in the Division of
Child Care to go over this with them and what they thought about it?
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
8:47
I did with the other, with the tax, with another bill that I had, and
they were favorable for it. In fact, they sat and they testified for me
as far as the importance of these in-home child care facilities
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
9:02
and services. I'm not speaking regarding the tax. I'm talking about the actual placing of facilities in certain communities. I'm sorry. I can't hear you. Not for the not there's a tax or a cost involved, actually the placement of certain facilities, these facilities in certain communities like
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
9:24
Pulaski County. Yeah. Thank you, Representative. Yeah, they're very favorable to this.
Representative Rick McClure
Unverified
9:30
Representative McClure, are you recognized? Is there a reason that the local municipalities
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
9:44
are not just handling this on their own? Well, again, the problem is, is there's rules, different rules all over the state that make the process either where they prevent you from being able to do it or it's so laborious that it actually, it doesn't incentivize people to start doing this at all.
So the idea is how do we make the barrier to entry easier for people to be able to provide in-home child care services? Does that make sense? It just relaxes things.
Representative Duke, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
10:26
Chair, and thank you, Representative, for bringing this bill. I've got two questions. Sure. So first of all, can you tell me more specifically what caused you to bring this bill?
What problem you're solving specifically? And second, when you talk about the zoning parts of it, does that mean that they can still, the city still have the authority to deal with any parking or issues like that, that arise whenever you have people coming in and dropping off and picking up their kids throughout the day? And actually a third, if I can throw the third one in there. And also, can the HOAs and POAs still regulate this?
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
11:13
I do not believe that this impacts HOAs because those are very specific. You know, people agree to terms to not be able to do that in
those areas. So they have their own form of legal restrictions, you know. This just has to do with city, so it's not an association rule here that we're applying this law to. As far as the
parking and all that, again, I think the other good thing is, yeah, it is pick-up, drop-off.
It's not like a short-term rental where you have several cars parked there all day long. So I think that alleviates a lot of those concerns. As far as the problem that we're trying to solve is that we're seeing such success with this pilot program that we don't want to restrict other
communities across our state from integrating this same program. Follow-up?
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
12:18
So have you had communities restrict
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
12:21
you? According to the director that is that is leading this out of Gentry, Arkansas, yes, that this is a very limiting element that could prevent this program from scaling across the state.
And also, I'm not sure we quite got to the to the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
12:38
parking part. So because any time that you have kids pick it, I mean, you can't have if I'm a neighbor, they might have concerns about am I going to have people blocking my drive?
Am I going to have different things like that? I know it's different than a school, but does the city not have any authority on that, or would they still have some oversight on
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
13:02
that with this bill in place? Correct. Yes, Representative Duke. They still have the authority to enforce the laws that are typical in these neighborhoods. That's exactly right. Good
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
13:16
question. I appreciate you asking. Representative Henley, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Torres. So when Representative Duke talked about parking, so my
first thought was I wasn't thinking about drop-off pickup.
I was thinking about the employees because I've seen that in my community where the city required them to come in because it's the business now. So they had to pour concrete for a parking lot for those employees because the code called for that. So there is something to that. And I really do think that because we all have these situations in our communities now, and those people lobbied the city council, the board of directors,
and either they saw provision to change the zoning or not. So I think that this really should be in the hands of local government. Could I respond? I think she means wouldn't you agree? oh yeah yeah wouldn't you agree and talk to the
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
14:20
parking uh issue as well i will i will thank you representative henley so the way this works is we don't have employees it's the homeowner
so they already live there so so the parking would not should not be an issue additional parking employee there's no employees it's the homeowner themselves that are operating the service. So, you know, I
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
14:43
don't know that code about child care. So you could have one person taking care of 10 children, regardless of the ages. You could have 10 babies and only one person. Yeah,
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
14:55
Representative, I'm not sure how that works.
I just know it's highly regulated and monitored as far as the rules around that. I can't answer that. I'm sorry. But how they're doing it is working really, really well right now. We've proven that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Nazarenko, you're
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
15:18
recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Torres, for bringing this. I know that you're very passionate about this, and you've done some work on it. I really appreciate that, too. I do have some concerns and some questions, so I'll try to make these as concise as possible.
The first one that kind of really strikes me, do you think that this could be looking at a very specific issue that then we would be making
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
15:47
that one specific area? Representative Nazarenko, I believe what this does is it eliminates any barriers
to scaling a very successful program to solve the child care needs that we have
in our state, especially in rural areas.
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
16:04
Okay, thanks. And like you kind of brought up the scaling. I know you've mentioned STRs, short-term rentals quite a bit. And we just recently, yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was the day before, it's all blended together. But just the other day, the House body voted down an issue where we were going to be kind of telling cities what they could and couldn't do with zoning on STR. So this, would you agree that this could be us trying to tell a city or municipality what they can and can't do with their own zoning?
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
16:40
Good question. The reason why I brought up the short-term rental was simply to use that as an example of what a density, you know, as far as people and cars and all that that create really an unwanted, you know, undesirable experience in a neighborhood, this doesn't do that. That was
the only reason why I used that as an example.
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
17:12
And I appreciate that, Mother. So with that, and I know each, as we talked about, each city municipality is a little bit different. Some municipalities, like mine in general, has multiple-use zones, so they're kind of zoned where they can do, you know, they have different flexibility. In there, there is short-term rentals. There are also some, you know, and I know each one is a little bit different. But with that, when we're kind of looking at all of those, I still go back to wouldn't you think it would be better that that city or municipality gets to say what they do or don't do locally to where they can just say, hey, we're going to change this rule.
We're going to change this zoning. And so it kind of gets back to we continue to talk about local control. So would you would
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
18:01
you think that this would be trying to get taking away from local control? Well, thank you, Representative. You know, I'll just kind
of relate to a bill that we passed, not just the House and the Senate, but is now law. This General Assembly passed a law that removed the ETJ, extraterritorial jurisdiction, of our cities across the entire state
that took the authority of zoning and land use and everything away from our city governments for whatever reason. This
is just limited to in-home child care services. Right. One last question, Madam Chair. And the
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
18:40
last thing I have, and again, I appreciate the work on it. I'm just kind of curious. Here we are at the end, and I know you said it's a time crunch, thus the emergency clause.
So one thing I'm looking at, because this could be something that's needed, because if we need more child care services and then maybe we're, you know, the buildings are too expensive for folks to go out there and buy the commercial building and turn it into a full-blown commercial, so this gives them the ability. But could this be something, instead of us trying to push it through emergency clause, let's get it done, you know, now, could this be something that we would say, hey, let's look in the interim and let's just say, is there really a need? Can we expect to be seeing even more?
Because something could change. So would you agree that maybe this could be
something we could look at in the interim and
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
19:37
say, this is a need, now let's do something about it? Yes, that could be
the case. The concern is that that will be two years from now. And
the needs of in-home child care or just child care in our communities across
the state is daunting absolutely daunting so my my request is to get this
bill passed as a start to to in
crafting it and and and working together in the future if there needs to be changes we can do that as a state but for now it just we don't need a yield sign or even a stop sign for people that are willing, and again, and I think Representative Nazarenko, again, I think we have to be realistic and know that this isn't going
to scale so big and become such a, it's very isolated. I mean,
not everybody's going to say, hey, I want to be an in-home child care provider. You know what I'm saying? So I think it's very limited in its impact in our communities, quite honestly. I think it just it relaxes for the moment these or these zonings right requirements that allow us to continue to take ground for a critical need that we have in our state I'll just use an example I
you know I run a bank and I've got you know 10 employees and I've got you know one of my tellers uh is a single mom you know with a little boy that's three and you know just haphazardly you know she she lost her child care provider uh for a very similar reason and then all of a sudden i mean she couldn't come to work she didn't know what to do you know and and also the affordability this provides a much more affordable a child care option that's not the commercial high cost high
overhead that a lot of our hard-working Arkansas can afford, you know, to have. So that's the other component of it. And so that's the purpose of the emergency clause is just to let's get a start, and then if we see issues, then I'm happy to rerun a bill in two years to kind of help hone it if it decides, if we decide that that is a need. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Are there any other questions by committee?
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
22:12
Representative Barnes, you're recognized. Torres, I really like what you're trying to do. My wife used to have one of these. Really? It's a beautiful thing. I think about some of the children. They call me daddy. And I see them out now. They're grown out and working and doing very well. I like the idea, but I think about many neighborhoods neighborhoods that people have paid really good money to have quietness, and they paid for that.
And that particular area is noted for that. Someone will put up one of these homes, or maybe more than one, and it's going to create some problems. And the problem is going to be on the city level, and we've made that decision from here, And we're not really giving them the luxury of going down to city council and debating it out because we've made that decision. And I think we're overreaching a little bit. I mean, I like the fact that we can do things to settle problems in cities, municipalities.
But with this, I think we're going to be overreaching into communities and maybe working very well for you. And that dynamic, it fits there. But you take that same model and put it somewhere else, it's going to create a lot of problems. So that's my position on it. Thank you. Thank you. Are there
any questions by committee? Seeing none, we have no one signed up
to speak for or against. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against?
Yeah, you're the audience, so I'm just asking you. Okay, thanks. Okay. Representative Torres, would you
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
24:00
like to close for your bill? Well, Madam Chair, I think that being said, I'll just pull it down and work
on it and try to craft something that will, and hopefully in the interim we can continue to go, move forward with this, but I appreciate the time to come and present this. The feedback is very helpful. Again, we are here to craft really good bills,
And we prefer long-term, solid solutions to the things that we do in our state. And this process, it will help with that. Thank you. Thank you for listening to committee and being willing to
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
24:37
pull your bill down and continue the good work. And that is all we have before us, committee. So we are adjourned. Thank you all.
Agenda
REGULAR AGENDA
Number Sponsor Subtitle
HB1997 Torres TO CREATE A ZONING EXEMPTION FOR CHILDCARE FAMILY HOMES; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
DEFERRED BILLS
Number Sponsor Subtitle
SB340 A. Clark TO AMEND ARKANSAS LAW CONCERNING CERTAIN FEES, EXPENSES, AND COSTS IMPOSED ON A JUVENILE OR THE PARENT, GUARDIAN, OR CUSTODIAN OF A JUVENILE.
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — AGING, CHILDREN AND YOUTH, LEGISLATIVE & MILITARY AFFAIRS- HOUSE, Apr 9, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 1
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Representative Rick McClure
Unverified
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 61