Sherine Weaver of Buffalo fought to keep her composure as she pleaded with county officials Wednesday not to cut off her child care subsidy for her two children.

“I make $350 a week. To pay for day care out of my pockets it would be $300 a week. I was just told by Social Services that they intend to cut me off on Feb. 10. . . . I think that is ridiculous,” said Weaver, fighting back tears.

She was among about 100 parents, day care providers and others from across Erie County who attended a forum Wednesday in the Delavan-Grider Community Center, 77 E. Delavan Ave., to protest new eligibility rules imposed by Social Services Commissioner Carol Dankert and County Executive Chris Collins that will cut off day care subsidies for about 1,500 children, or four of every 10 recipients in and around the nation’s third-poorest major city.

Dankert, who attended Wednesday’s meeting to answer residents’ questions, said eligibility was narrowed because county officials believe it has become too expensive for taxpayers.

But Erie County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, who joined other county officials at the forum, including some county legislators, insisted that the county was caught flat-footed, and he blamed the Collins administration.

He said Erie County had a habit of not spending all of the money available to it in a fiscal year and rolling some money over to the next fiscal year. Because of that practice, Erie became one of the New York counties ineligible for the federal stimulus funding that would have helped support Erie County’s child care subsidies.

“This is not something that happened overnight. It’s something that usually members of county government were being advised of for some time by New York State, and the reason that some of the reduction was put in place is [because] Erie County was not doing a good enough job enrolling people so that we receive the correct allotment of money,” Poloncarz said.

Dankert disputed his assessment.

“I don’t think that anyone is going to accept the allegation that we didn’t purposely enroll everyone we could in the program. We want folks to use these dollars,” Dankert said.

“Our subsidy dollars are supposed to, first and foremost, pay for public assistance recipients. . . . Whatever money we have left over is the money that we are allowed to use for the low-income subsidy program that we are here talking about tonight,” Dankert added. However, parents like Weaver and Tracy Davis of Cheektowaga said they could not continue work without the subsidy.

“I would have to spend $800 [a month] to send my son to day care. I don’t even bring home $800 every two weeks,” Davis said.

Copyright 2009, The Buffalo News