Travis County passes plan to invest in affordable child care

By the time early votes rolled in on election night, Travis County’s sweeping investment in child care services had already garnered 60 percent of the vote, holding on to that margin through the night. Proposition A will generate $75 million in its first year, to go toward making child care affordable in the most expensive county in the state. It will add an extra 2.5 cents to the average homeowner’s property tax, amounting to an increase of about $288 a year. That $75 million will fund almost 6,000 new slots in day cares, after-school programs and summer child care, reserved for families earning 85 percent or less than the median family income – or $100,000 for a family of four.

“It’s a big investment of people’s property tax dollars; I understand that,” Travis County Judge Andy Brown told the Austin Monitor on election night. “But it also is going to have tremendous benefits, not just for the thousands of families that will now have access to high-quality, affordable child care – it’s going to help our economy.”

The new funding will plug gaps in state-subsidized reimbursement to providers that have been increasing since funding from the pandemic ran out, resulting in 4,500 people on a two-year waitlist to access only 3,000 slots locally. Plus, Brown says, “in reality, that really means a lot of families just don’t get it, because often by the time you get it, your kids have sort of aged out of that critical (age) zero to 3 zone.” On top of the wait, Travis County – despite being smaller than other Texas metro areas – has the most expensive child care in the state. Without public support, it costs more than in-state tuition at UT-Austin. 

When crafting the programs the new revenue will fund, county staff focused on expanding nontraditional child care hours serving parents who work outside of the typical 9-5 schedule. Other programs include creating a “business-government alliance” to incentivize companies to make child care an employee benefit by matching employer contributions, plus plugging gaps in the state’s existing reimbursements to providers. The tax increase will specifically improve wages for providers, taking them from an average of $14 an hour in Austin to at least $20 an hour.

“I’m excited about the sort of partnerships that we’re going to do with businesses to provide child care to their workers and to share costs,” Brown said. “I’m excited about the number of providers that I think this will bring back and add to our community – not only is it unaffordable, but there just aren’t enough providers, and I think this will change both of those things.” 

Brown himself has two children, ages 8 and 9. He says, “It seems like yesterday when we were looking for child care. I remember getting in a week or two before the day care we wanted started. So, yeah, it was a very stressful process. Even for my family, who could afford market-rate child care. I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for people who not only need to find a provider, but also have to figure out ways to make it affordable. This is going to make that easier for for people on sort of all ends of that spectrum – kids and families are going to see benefits immediately. But also, 18 years from now, there’s going to be higher graduation rates for those kids, lower health care costs, apart from those specific families that benefit – it will help the economy generally in Travis County by adding to our workforce and making this just more of a worker-friendly, family-friendly county to move your business to.”

Photo by Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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