In early 2024, the Children’s Funding Project Work Group proposed a plan that represents the collaboration of a core group of stakeholders, including elected officials and staff from Travis County (“County”), the City of Austin, United Way for Greater Austin, Early Matters Greater Austin, the Children’s Funding Project, Learn All the Time (LATT) Network with the Andy Roddick Foundation, and several community members, who worked together to explore and identify a sustainable funding option for quality child care and afterschool/summer programming.
On May 14, 2024, the Travis County Commissioners Court approved a resolution entitled “Travis County Cares: Creating Access for Resilient Families,” which directed County staff to take all necessary steps to hold a Tax Rate Election (“TRE”) in November 2024. The resolution proposed a 2.5-cent property tax rate increase. The purpose of the proposed TRE is to increase access to affordable and high-quality child care and afterschool/summer programming and related services for low-income families and developing and administering related workforce and economic development programs.
The proposed 2.5-cent tax increase would generate over $75 million and would have a $125.98 impact on the average taxable homestead value.
The tax increase would fund strategies for:
- The direct provision of child care and afterschool/summer programming so parents can participate in education or training and enter or remain in the workforce;
- Workforce development for child care and afterschool/summer programming providers and staff through training and education; and
- Economic development for businesses and the community, as a whole.
These strategies could:
- Create nearly 1900 new slots for infants/toddlers (ages 0-3) from low-income households;
- Create nearly 3900 new afterschool/summer programming slots for school-age youth (PreK-12);
- Increase the quality and capacity of child care and afterschool/summer programming providers; and
- Stimulate workforce and economic development.
Below is a summary of each proposed strategy:
| Proposed Strategy | Descriptions |
|---|---|
| Strategy 1: Expand contracted slots for infants/toddlers (0-3), afterschool and summer programmin | Fund new slots that pay for the true cost of quality child care and afterschool and summer programming. |
| Strategy 2: Expand non-traditional hour care | Increase access to child care by paying child care providers rates that pay for the true cost of quality care during early morning, evenings, overnights, and weekends. |
| Strategy 3: Build quality and capacity | Includes quality and capacity building components for child care and afterschool/summer programming providers. Also includes a gap funding measure to pay providers the difference between existing subsidy reimbursement rates and contracted slots program rates to reflect the true cost of quality care for infants and toddlers. |
| Strategy 4: Business Government Alliance | Incentivize businesses to contribute to employee child care costs by matching public funds to employer contributions. |
