Ballot measure asks taxpayers to help fund access to affordable child care

In May of this year, Travis County committed to a broad investment in child care with the Creating Access for Resilient Families, or CARES initiative. To fund that care sustainably, the county will ask voters on Nov. 5 to approve a 2.5-cent property tax increase, which would generate an estimated $75.8 million and raise the average homeowner’s taxes by about $288 a year.

In a press conference May 13, Travis County Judge Andy Brown said, “We hear frequently from families who are struggling to meet just basic needs. That’s why we are taking this next big step so we can alleviate this financial burden for working families and ensure that every child, regardless of socioeconomic status, has access to the nurturing care they deserve.”

During the pandemic, child care facilities were supported by the Texas Workforce Commission’s Child Care Relief Fund program, which distributed $3.5 billion of federal grant dollars to providers. By 2023, that funding ended, and a staggering 44 percent of child care providers reported that they were at risk of closing within the year.

The state still offers some subsidized slots, but only about 45 percent of providers in the county offer them, according to 2023 TWC data. There are only around 3,000 slots locally, with 4,500 people on a two-year wait to access them. So even if a slot frees up, the threshold for eligibility is based on the state median income, not the cost of living, meaning families that make too much to qualify for the subsidized spots, but still struggle to pay rent in Austin, have few options.

Without public funding, child care for an infant in Austin costs more than in-state tuition at UT-Austin, Brown told commissioners in August. Last year, a study by the National Database of Childcare Prices found that Travis County has the highest cost of child care in the state, even compared to much-larger Dallas or Houston.

To address this crisis, the county worked with a slate of stakeholders over the last year, including the city of Austin, United Way for Greater Austin, Early Matters Greater Austin, the Children’s Funding Project, and the Andy Roddick Foundation to build a sustainable funding structure for child care in the county.

The tax increase would fund four main strategies: 1) increase subsidized spots in day cares and after-school and summer programs; 2) expand options for parents who work outside the regular 9-5 schedule; 3) create a “business-government alliance” to incentivize companies to make child care an employee benefit; and 4) plug gaps in the state’s reimbursements to providers. Families earning 85 percent or less of the median family income – or $100,000 a year for a family of four – would be eligible for these programs. Altogether, they would add 1,900 new slots for infants and toddlers and 3,900 slots for after-school and summer programs.

One of the reasons wait lists are so long, Commissioner Jeff Travillion stressed in August, is that “we don’t have enough teachers prepared to deal with the students.” The tax increase would not only fund more options for parents, but also improve wages for providers, who are on average paid only $14 an hour in Austin. Because of these low wages, the industry, largely staffed by women and people of color, experiences more than 30 percent turnover annually. And the state’s current reimbursements to providers for subsidized slots aren’t enough to fund a living wage. With the proposed tax rate increase, the county aims to provide enough funding for child care employers to pay their staff a $20 minimum wage at least. 

The county also hopes to work with employers to make child care an employee benefit, by matching their contributions with dollars generated by the tax rate increase. This would essentially create a co-subsidy for more affordable slots to become available.

Adam Orman, the owner of L’Oca d’Oro and founder of Good Work Austin, which helps restaurants provide child care benefits to their employees, spoke in favor of this aspect of the program in August.

“Hospitality is the biggest employer in Central Texas, and in a workforce that is predominantly female and BIPOC, we have folks who are cobbling together resources on weekends, on weekday nights (to obtain child care). Missed shifts means missed rent, it means missed utility bills, especially in an industry where folks are still largely making $2.13 an hour and relying on tips for their wages.”

Orman said the need for expanded hours outside of the normal 9-5 is “overwhelming.” 

Ryan Pollock, an electrician with the electrical workers local 520 union, told commissioners that a common barrier for people in IBEW’s electrician apprenticeship program is access to child care during nontraditional hours.

“Our work involves long days starting long before the sun rises, long before most child care centers are open, and frequently six-day workweeks, plus mandatory classroom time for apprentices after work,” Pollock said. “Managing this schedule is often impossible without affordable child care.”

The city has also made recent investments in child care, passing an ordinance change in January that exempted certain facilities from paying property taxes and directed the city manager to find other ways to help home-based providers that weren’t eligible.

Council Member Alison Alter, who has long championed child care issues and wrote that resolution, told commissioners in August that they took what the city started and “made it a better policy. We’re here to walk with you. It’s not lost on me that we have folks from the city, folks from ACC, folks from AISD who are here. There are very few projects in my decades in policy where every level of government (says) yes, this is the problem we need to solve, and (agree on) how we need to solve it together.” 

The tax rate election could not only improve labor standards in the child care industry and alleviate stress on working parents in all industries, it could have ripple effects in the rest of the community. Commissioner Travillion said upon the resolution passing, “I grew up in a community that was separate and funded unequally – it’s important to recognize that all parts of town need this type of access. This is not a problem in West Austin. It has historically been a problem in East Austin, and unfortunately in many instances by design.”

Liz Schoenfeld, the CEO of LifeWorks, an organization that works with homeless youth, told commissioners that “a full 50 percent of the youth we provide housing services to are either pregnant or parenting. HeadStart or pre-K is an option that is only really available for ages 3 and older, so parents who have infants or toddlers simply do not have an affordable child care option. So many of the youth we serve are already in a precarious financial situation, and without access to child care they are unable to work, and that compounds the housing instability and food insecurity they’re already facing. They should be thinking about graduating high school, thinking about their career path, not deciding whether they pay rent or pay for child care.”

If the tax rate passes, it could significantly expand the county’s social safety net by boosting a struggling but existing industry.

“There are many organizations in the community that can do this work but they don’t have sufficient funding to do it,” Cathy McHorse of United Way for Greater Austin told commissioners June 25. “It’s not so much building a plane – the plane exists, we just need to put the fuel in the plane so it can take off and fly.”

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.