Tax Problem Threatens Creative Care Day Care

The only day-care center in Oakdale is on the brink of foreclosure, and is up for sale.

Wendy Summers, owner of , says the economy has taken a toll on her business.

“Business hasn’t been good for the last five years,” she says. “It’s all around, it’s not just us.”

Summers owes $28,000 in taxes to the town. She says she hasn’t paid for two years, and that her taxes are roughly $5,000 a year. The rest, she says, is interest.

Someone has stepped in to help with the taxes, but of course, she has to pay the benefactor. And the only way to do that, she says, is to sell the business.

“The town is not willing to deal,” she says. “They want their money. It’s OK.”

Mayor Ron McDaniel says Montville is working with Creative Care Daycare, but “there’s really nothing that the town offers.”

In fact, he said, with the economy and the hits that Montville has taken to the grand list this year, “The town is in no state to offer anything.”

The slack economy accounts for Summers’s failure to pay the taxes, she says. Right now, for instance, though the day-care center is licensed for 44 kids, it has about half that. The kids are ages 2-11, but Creative Care is licensed for six weeks to 12 years.

Montville’s plan to shift to full-day kindergarten is another issue on the horizon.

Just up the road, there’s a for-sale sign at , which is not a day-care center, but offers programs for pre-school kids. A call to Growing Garden was not returned.

McDaniel says that if businesses are seeing tax trouble on the horizon, they should reach to the state for help. The Small Business Administration would be a place to start, he said, or the Connecticut Council of Governments.

“I’m kind of upset,” Summers says, “but there’s nothing I can do. The economy is just kicking our butts. There’s no help out there. I wish there was but there’s not.

“I understand the town needs their money, they really do. I am not upset about the town. I am upset there’s no help for small business, there’s no help for the little people.”