ST PAUL, Minn — The Saint Paul City Council voted Wednesday to override Mayor Melvin Carter’s veto on a childcare funding proposal, meaning voters will now decide in 2024 if they want to raise property taxes to pay for low-income childcare subsidies.
After a short public discussion, the council voted 5-2 in favor of the measure.
“I think that the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good,” Ward 2 Council Member Rebecca Noecker said voting ‘yes’ on the proposal. “This is a groundbreaking investment in kids and families in St. Paul. No city in Minnesota has ever done anything like this.”
If voters approve the measure in 2024, the city could increase the average property tax by $16 in the first year to fund an initial $2 million for low-income child care. From there, the program would steadily increase both the property tax and funding amount, to provide for $20 million in Year 10.
During a news conference before the council’s override, Mayor Carter accused the council of rushing the item to the ballot without crunching the numbers. Using two whiteboards for demonstration, Carter drew up his own cost estimate and claimed that the council’s program would fall tens of millions of dollars short – as much as $91 million in an annual gap, he claimed. He went as far as to say that he would not be able to implement the program as designed.
“I’ll buy a case of Summit beer for anybody who can show me a detailed program budget that exists in the public record with regard to this proposal,” Carter said. “To date, the longest document that exists… is my veto letter, and the most detailed budget that anyone of us have ever seen with regard to this $100 million city proposal is written on my toddler’s whiteboard.”
After the vote, Carter said that “Unfortunately, exactly what I expected to happen is exactly what happened.”
“If this were an honest proposal that actually matched spending with revenues, then my concerns would be in a different space,” Carter said. “My concerns would be about policy and not about false promises.”
But Noecker said the council never promised that the plan would cover all low-income families in the city.
“There’s never been a claim this would cover every single child on Day One,” Noecker said. “This is to provide low-income families with free child care and to make it more affordable for families above that. We’ve been clear from the beginning that we’re going to need to prioritize based on funds available, even among the most low-income families. But again, $20 million more than our community has ever seen, [is] going to an incredible need.”
It should be noted that the ballot question merely “authorizes” the city to raise property taxes for childcare funding. Mayor Carter said the proposal, as it stands, “cannot be implemented” because of the funding shortfall.
Although Wednesday’s council vote advances the ballot question to the November 2024 ballot, a future council could theoretically vote to remove the item from the election ballot. Four of seven seats are up for re-election this fall.