A total of 28 parents, grandparents, employers and Masonic Lodge members filled the Cassville City Council chambers on July 8, offering heartfelt testimony urging the council to reverse its June decision that denied a special use permit for Taba’s Tiny Town daycare, operating out of the Pythagoras Masonic Lodge No. 383.

The daycare, housed in the basement of the lodge at 1705 Main St., is located in a residential zone. Because it operates as a daycare center, a commercial classification, the city determined a special use permit was required.

After the original permit request was denied at the June Council meeting following a planning and zoning recommendation boiling down to a sewer issue, Lodge representatives and supporters returned in force to ask the council to reconsider.

“This partnership with Taba’s Tiny Town totally solves a financial issue for us and allows us to be able to devote all of that time and money and attention to other philanthropic opportunities and other needs that we can try to meet inside of Cassville,” said Keith Todd, a Lodge representative. “We are requesting the reversal of that previous decision so that we can continue to do that, and so that Tabatha’s Tiny Town can offer a really important public service to the parents in our community.

“We’ve given over $4,000 to local charitable organizations. We’ve done $1,000 for the Cassville Band to help them with the purchase of some new uniforms, $1,000 for the Cassville Pantry, and most recently, we’ve been able to do $2,300 — a big increase — and that was for the Cassville Intermediate Beta Club to go to their national competition in Florida. The biggest reason that we have been able to increase the size of those charitable donations has been because of Tabatha’s Tiny Town.”

“We sincerely appreciate all of you being here today,” said Mayor Jon Horner at the beginning of the meeting. “We want your voice to be heard.”

“It is very challenging for her to sustain continued care,” said Tim Terry, a parent whose son has attended the daycare for nearly seven years. “Let’s find a middle ground where we can to keep the community [from] filing complaints or whatever that’s brought this to arise. Please consider this. I know you guys will have to arbitrate, talk about these things, and go through the letter of the law and our ordinances and stuff and revisit to maybe make a change or revamp, to keep these guys and their business open, and obviously Tabatha’s Tiny Town.”

“My son’s been under her care and her staff since he was 10 months old. He’s now nearly seven. So, I can tell you, continuity of care is huge for me, and I trust that her and her staff is going to take good care of these kids.”

“We went into a 45-mile radius and no one would take her,” said Chekota Sizemore, whose daughter has autism and is nonverbal. “These daycares are very reassuring that they had state training and they were licensed and they still wouldn’t accept her — not because she’s a danger, not because she’s unlovable, but because they didn’t have the time, the knowledge or the willingness to understand her. And every time that happens, it chips away at a parent’s hope.”

“Taba’s didn’t just say, ‘Yes, [your daughter] is welcome here,’ they said yes with a warm embrace. They’ve gone above and beyond for [my daughter’s] needs. They don’t just supervise her. They see her, they listen, they adapt and they care. They’ve created a space where she feels safe and she feels understood and she feels comfortable, and that’s everything to a parent of a child with special needs.”

“I work at Mercy Clinic in Cassville, and Jake works at Miller Pipeline,” she said. “If this daycare gets taken away, I have to quit my job.”

“Tabatha has been very helpful with everything as far as special needs,” said Jacob Sizemore. “We went to Monett, we tried Aurora, we tried Springfield — we’ve tried everywhere. [Our daughter] went to Monett for a little bit. There was one up there that specifically said they specialize in it. It was maybe a week she went up there. They called us and said, ‘We can’t do this.’ Taba’s has been a blessing to us.”

Jessica Green, a mother of two children who attend Taba’s, said with the lack of daycare options in Cassville, closing one would be a detriment.

“There are already too few daycares in Cassville,” she said. “If we don’t make room for our children in our community now, young families may have to look for child care in other towns. If our current daycare were to close due to a lack of adequate commercial building to operate within, my household and all the families whose children attend Taba’s Tiny Town will have to find new child care or suffer the hardship of considering having a parent leave their job and stay home with their child or children. This would be especially challenging for families with a single parent. Please don’t discourage young families from living and growing in Cassville.”

Alicia Smith said Taba’s has provided exceptional care for her grandchildren.

“My grandbabies get up, and I’m there and they’re excited to see me, but they want to go to Tabatha’s,” she said. “They want to go to Tabatha’s daycare because there’s structure, there’s love, there’s children — everything’s great. My thing is, daycares are hard to come by, especially one that your children love, that doesn’t cry because they’ve got to go to daycare — they get to go to daycare — and that’s a big difference.”

“My kids, they look forward even on the weekends to go there,” said Katie Cook, Smith’s daughter. “They don’t want to be home. They’d rather be there. They’re safe, they’re comforting. They know they’re well taken care of and loved, and all the lovely things. She’s so flexible and just great. It would be horrible to take her away.”

Kayla Walker, a single mother of two children, has had a 3-yearold attending Taba’s for a year.

“It is very hard for me to find a daycare that is affordable and that works with my schedule, because a lot of the ones I have called don’t open up early enough for me to go to work,” she said. “A lot of places, they don’t open up until like, 7 or 8 o’clock.

“My daughter absolutely loves Tabby and loves the girls, and I hope you guys will reconsider this and keep her open. It’s helping the lodge. It’s helping a bunch of families.”

Sarah Olson, administrator at Roaring River Health and Rehab in Cassville, said the daycare closing could wreak havoc on her staff.

“I have six employees, maybe seven, that work at the facility taking care of our elderly people right up the road,” she said. “Some of them have two kids in her daycare. Some of them have one. But if the daycare closes, I’m going to have a big problem with my staff not being able to come to work, not being able to care for our elderly people.”

The main opposition to the daycare being housed at the Lodge was an ongoing sewer issue. That problem, which the Lodge members thought they’d fixed but later determined was being caused by tree roots that had infiltrated the pipes underground, has now been remedied.

“We thought originally it was a crushed line,” Todd said. “It was roots in the system. If we had known that, it would have been taken care of the day we discovered it, but we didn’t find out it was roots until last month, and it has been taken care of and paid for by the lodge. So that has been done.”

After hearing the speakers, Richard Asbill, Cassville city administrator, said the council will take the concerns under advisement and revisit the subject in August.

“They don’t just go, ‘Well, we got 25 people, let’s do something,’” Asbill said. “They have to take that under advisement, and then they’ll direct me to either visit with the lodge and say, ‘Okay, we need to do X, Y and Z,’ or we’ve got to go back to planning and zoning.”

In the meantime, the daycare is allowed to continue operating, and there is no 30-day requirement to vacate.

“Tabatha, you’re safe,” Asbill said. “We’re not in a 30-day or anything like that. All that is still paused. You can continue to operate. All those things stay in place. We will work with the lodge, because it’s actually the lodge that’s requested the special use, not Tabatha. She and the families are most impacted, but I don’t want you to leave here going, ‘What the heck did we just do?’ You spoke. You gave them the information.”

“You should leave here in a positive tone. Because most of the time, no one comes to city council, let alone do they show up at planning and zoning. So, the fact that you’re here and you participated, you’re like, ‘Hey, we want you to know,’ that [has an impact].

“We got your points; we received the message you wanted for us to hear,” Horner said. “This has been extremely helpful for the council. We understand the importance of childcare for our community. We understand the importance, and we appreciate the importance of the Masonic Lodge.”

On Monday, Asbill said he was meeting with Lodge members today (Wednesday), and another planning and zoning meeting will likely occur next week.

“They will review six items [for the special use permit]: the location and size; accessibility of the property; utilities and services, which is where the sewer issue came up last time; the location of the building and improvements to adjacent properties; adequacy of open space; and the general compatibility with adjacent properties because it’s in a residential area,” Asbill said.

Regarding the original denial, Asbill said a resident expressed concern about the sewer issue at the June planning and zoning meeting. The Lodge and two houses utilize the same line, and increased use from the daycare led to a cleanout overflowing.

“That change in scope of activity was affecting the neighbors,” Asbill said. “Once they used a camera, determined it was tree roots and got it fixed, they have not had any issues since.”

With that issue solved, Asbill said he is confident the planning and zoning commission will recommend the special use permit be issued, then the council will have final say on its approval or denial.

The next planning and zoning meeting has yet to be scheduled. Asbill said committee members will be contacted this week and likely meet next week for 30 minutes over the lunch hour to review the application and make a recommendation.