A Message from the Director
Welcome to the July Edition of Chatterjee Chats! This month represented a big milestone with the celebration of One Year of DELC! This past year has been a blur of activity – we have accomplished so much together, and there is still more work to do. Here are some reflections from me as we close out the month and head into Year Two 😊
Do you want to receive this update in your email? Sign up for our Community Newsletter and Child Care Updates twice monthly send by subscribing here.
Our August Update
Customer Service Survey
As a new agency, we will be launching our first DELC Customer Service Survey in August. If you have received funding from us, called our customer service team, been licensed or interacted with us in any way – we want to hear from you! While all agencies are required to conduct a customer service survey, we are particularly excited to hear from you as we’ve offered services as DELC. This survey should take you less than five minutes, and any feedback you share with us will help us operationalize our value for continuous improvement. For more information, please check out our website: Department of Early Learning and Care : About Us : State of Oregon
Budget Development
This will continue to be a topic here for awhile! We are entering the last month of Agency Request Budget (ARB) development. ARB will be released by September 1, 2024. Given the current revenue forecast, our ARB requests will be smaller compared to last biennium, but it is just the first step in the process and there is still a lot of work to do before the Governor’s Recommended Budget (GRB) is released in December.
Legislative Concepts
In addition to budget development, another part of preparing for the Legislative Session is preparing legislative concepts (LCs) for consideration. While ARB will be released in September, LCs will take a bit more time. We won’t expect to receive a draft of our legislative concepts until late October, and we will have a very short turnaround (a few days). From there, our legislative concepts will still need to be reviewed and approved by the Governor’s Office prior to release. More information to come, but this is still in the works.
Tribal-State Government-to-Government Summit
On July 24, DELC’s Tribal Affairs Director, Paulina Whitehat and I had the great pleasure of attending the 2024 Tribal-State Government-to-Government Summit, co-hosted by Governor Tina Kotek and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The summit took place in Canyonville at Seven Feathers Casino Resort. Tribal leaders of Oregon’s nine federally recognized sovereign Tribal nations along with staff from multiple state agencies discussed a range of issues including evolving best practices in Tribal consultation approaches, indigenous ecological knowledge, and topics related to economic and sustainable futures. It was wonderful to see so many colleagues and partners in person, and the summit is always an informative and moving event. We are deeply appreciative of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe for hosting this year’s gathering.