Families, city need child care; approve tax relief

Texas is losing child care facilities at an alarming rate.

The San Antonio community needs to address this crisis if we are going to grow as a society, employ every able adult to the best of their capabilities and nurture future generations.

Enabling property tax relief is one way to help. Critical discussions and votes for local implementation of property tax relief for child care facilities will be held by the San Antonio City Council on March 20 and April 4. We encourage all residents to strongly urge their City Council representative to vote “yes.” Bexar County Commissioner on Tuesday voted unanimously for the tax exemption.

The Texas nonprofit Children at Risk found that Texas lost 21% of its child care providers from March 2020 to September 2021, 41% of whom served infants and toddlers. Of the 135,000 children younger than 5 in this county, 60% have parents in the workforce.

Many child care providers struggle to make ends meet; they can’t retain workers due to low pay. And parents can’t afford child care at $10,000 per child per year.

Without this local implementation, Texas Proposition 2 — which allows a property tax exemption on all or part of a property used to operate a child care facility and was overwhelmingly approved by Texas voters in November — will make no difference.

Early childhood education and child care are critical to Texas’ continuing economic development, both to enable workers to go to work knowing their children are safe and to grow the workers of tomorrow. Remember, 90% of brain development occurs before age 5.

Local and national business leaders have grasped the gravity of this issue. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation studies in 2021 found that states lost billions of dollars in economic activity due to breakdowns in child care, an existing problem made worse by the pandemic.

Local business leaders such as Peter John Holt, Joe Straus and David Robinson Jr. joined together to create Early Matters, a nonprofit advocating for highquality early childhood education precisely because of its effect on business outcomes. Our community recognized the importance of early childhood education before by passing Pre-k 4 SA. This is another part of that critical work.

Senate Bill 1145 provides a pathway to provide some relief, but it must be enabled by each local taxing entity.

The adopted bill requires:

• The property either own and operate a child care facility or have a child care facility as a tenant.

• At least 20% of the total number of children enrolled at the facility receive subsidized child care services.

• The owner include with his/her application for the tax exemption an affidavit to the chief appraiser indicating that the owner has provided the child care facility a disclosure showing the amount by which the property taxes are reduced.

• The rent charged for the lease of the facility be reduced by an equal amount.

To date, the cities of Austin, Dallas and Denton have implemented this tax exemption.

Recently, San Antonio has taken key measures to provide meaningful tax relief to homeowners as property values skyrocketed after the pandemic. Providing tax relief to operators of eligible child care facilities would be another critical tool to help address the loss of child care facilities in our community.