In an unusual move, the mayor of the state’s capital city is publically denouncing a ballot initiave. Voters from St. Paul be able to check yea or nay to dedicated funding of daycare through property taxes. The mayor says he will not follow with the program despite the outcome of the vote.
The funding would support a “last dollar” early childhood learning program that would plug the gap left after accounting for any state or federal child care aid, but would only support roughly 150 families in the first year, according to a projection put together by a consultant on the program. By its last year, more than 4,000 kids would benefit from the program annually.
The program will require a new department with city staffin one number I heard was seven new full-time positions. Perhaps it’s the surcharge which accompanies any program run by a bureaucracy that the mayor finds objectional.
The new special tax levy would bring in $2 million in the first year and scale up to $20 million by the tenth year of implementation for a total investment of $110 million over a decade.
Perhaps the fear is that once in place, it will grow into an insatiable objective. Or perhaps it’s about asking voters to signal their preference in the distribution of one very specific piece of a system instead of the actors in play in the objective. Perhaps its about fairness when only 150 families benefit when there are perhaps 20,000 in a position to receive aid.
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