The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

[Macro error: Can't include because the file is larger than 32767 characters.]

Eurma C. Hayes Child Care Center will close for one week

The Carbondale City Council will vote tonight on the possibility of re-modeling of the Eurma C. Hayes Child Care Center during a weeklong closure starting Monday.

The extent of the cost and the amount of re-modeling to occur is still unknown.

"We don't know how much we can get done during closure or how much it will cost, so I don't have any definite answers at this time," said Don Monty, Carbondale's assistant city manager.

"We're looking at major things: gutting and re-modeling the bathroom, painting, re-doing lights and tiles in the ceiling; it's not just cosmetic stuff."

Community Services Manager Deborah McCoy, with assistance from the Department of Children and Family Services, Child Care Resource and Referral and Rainbow's End, worked to develop a plan to help the center during this time of transition.

If approved, the city will be performing general maintenance and cleaning on the facility, as well as counting inventory of learning materials and toys and some re-modeling work.

"What we need to do is go through thoroughly and see what we've got and what adjustments need to be made," Monty said. "If there are items needed that are obsolete and need to be replaced, then we will do that."

According to Monty, the city could dip into the center's budget or the city's general fund to pay for the replacement of these items.

He said because of the re-structuring, not all rooms would be in use every day and could be re-modeled while the children use other rooms.

"I don't think people should realistically expect all these things to happen at once," Monty said. "It's going to take a while."

Monty said the suggestions made to the council by the mayoral review panel recommended improvements be completed by January.

The money for re-modeling will come from the Rental Properties Budget. The budget contained $51,250 to resurface the building parking lot, which the proposal suggests using for the re-modeling instead.

According to the city manager's office, the parking lot is in good enough condition to be resealed instead of completely resurfaced. The money saved will in turn be used to fund the re-modeling recommended by the transition planning group.

The restructuring of the center also includes the lay-off of six full-time positions: three teachers, one building custodian, one secretary and the assistant coordinator of the center.

"None of the part-time people received a lay-off notice[and] the reason is because they work on an on-call basis, so they will continue to work on an as needed basis," Monty said.

In order to compensate for the loss of staff, employees have been advised of changes to the center's operation and the expanded duties employees will have to assume.