BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — Boulder County Commissioners will decide Thursday afternoon if a new measure, aimed at addressing the shortage and high cost of childcare, will be placed on the November ballot.
The proposed measure calls to raise property taxes by 2.579 mills to fund what supporters are calling a “childcare crisis.”
CEO for the Early Childhood Council in Boulder County Kaycee Headrick said the “tenants” of this plan focus on family affordability.
- Watch the full story in the video player below.
“They're around expansion of infant and toddler slots because we are pervasively low for infant and toddler slots in terms of the needs that we have in our community, and it's around supporting our workforce, our early childhood care and educators, supporting them so that they can remain in this industry,” she explained.
Headrick’s organization is one of the several in Boulder County that make up Brighter Start Boulder County, a coalition pushing to get this measure in front of voters in November.
“We started to look at data and trends around our childhood system or our early care and education system and realizing that we have some systemic problems and that they need addressing,” Headrick said. “That’s when we got community partners together, families, parents, childcare providers, community leaders, elected officials-all to come together to talk about what could be some solutions to address our systematic challenges for early care and education.”
If county commissioners vote to put this measure on the ballot, and voters approve it in November, Headrick said for the typical homeowner whose home is assessed at about $725,000 they would pay about $115 more a year, which she says to comes out to about an extra $10 a month.
The coalition does have a calculator online where you can see how much you would have to pay in additional taxes based on your property value.
“We know that really to close the gap for all of the needs of early childhood care and education, it would cost way more than $30 million So we wanted to prioritize what do we need to have happen so that we can get out of the crisis in which it feels like today,” Headrick said. “The crisis being parents are paying nearly in-state college-rate tuition for childcare. The crisis being that we do not have enough slots for infant and toddlers, and the other crisis being that we have pervasive workforce turnover and that we can't keep people because the wages are low in our community.”
As a mother of two young children herself, Headrick said this advocacy is both professional and personal.
“I have a one-year-old and a four-year-old, and we pay well over our mortgage in childcare costs, and we are fortunate to have some of the most incredible teachers and educators working with our children, but that is not the reality that so many families face,” Headrick said.
She added that childcare in Boulder County costs about 24-35% of someone’s annual household income.
“For an infant going to a center or a program for full time care, it costs about $23,000 per year per child,” Headrick explained.
Elizabeth Fannon, the Early Childhood Program Director at the Aspen Center for Child Development, echoed the need for this ballot measure.
"Everybody knows somebody who depends on childcare, and this this ballot initiative is going to help everybody," she exclaimed.
"This ballot initiative really would provide a lot of support for us, so that we could serve more of our families who receive CCAP (Child Care Assistance Program) funding or are eligible for the CCAP funding, and hopefully help with like unfreezing the CCAP situation because of the freeze," Fannon explained.
Boulder County's Child Care Assistance program is a resource that assists low income families with childcare costs.
Headrick says Boulder County has frozen new CCAP enrollment since 2024 due to a lack of funding amid a growing demand, so families are placed on waitlists and not receiving the assistance.
She noted in Boulder County there are over 1,000 children on the CCAP freeze list.
Fannon added that as more families are looking for affordable childcare, this measure would help the center provide that and would also help them to recruit and retain more teachers, which would help as they look to expand in September.
"We would have three classrooms, two for toddler toddler age children, 12 months to 36 months, and then a preschool age classroom for children two and a half to five years old, and fully at full enrollment, we would offer 30-two spots to children. 50% of that enrollment, we've committed to being to serving families who qualify for financial support," she explained.
Headrick did mention that in 2023, there was a similar initiative that was put in front of county commissioners that called for a special tax district. The difference with this current measure is that it would go directly through the county rather than calling for a special tax district.
County Commissioners are expected to decide whether or not this measure makes it to the ballot in November after a public hearing Thursday at 1 p.m.
You can attend and comment during this afternoon's hearing virtually or in person.
