Everyone knows there is a huge need for high-quality child care. It can be incredibly costly, difficult to obtain, and not flexible enough for the average working family. More work needs to go into providing resources to make it more accessible, flexible and affordable.
Measure DD in South San Francisco seeks to solve it for anyone who lives and works in the city, yet falls short because it has a funding mechanism in place but no plans for implementation. Proponents say that the plans will come later and will be decided over 18 months by the City Council. However, the council majority is against this proposal.
Measure DD seeks a $2.50 per square foot tax on any commercial parcel more than 25,000 square feet. Doing so would raise about $55.9 million every year. With that, the only thing that is fleshed out in this proposal is that it would go toward paying for child care primarily for ages 2 1/2 to 5, and the rest would be figured out later. They say the devil is in the details, but this proposal has none to explore. And that’s a problem.
The city of South San Francisco has a child care master plan, and we could envision a process that looks at that plan and seeks a way to address the city’s most dire needs, then seeks a way to fund it. This is the typical process for public policy.
There is also the very real issue that this measure is not aimed to cover child care needs from 0 to 2 1/2, which is often very much needed, or after 5, when parents require it for after care or for before-school care. It aims to be a supplement to the current TK-12 education only and, while that is a need, it is not the only need.
The aim of the measure is good, and its proponents have their heart in the right place. However, we cannot recommend a funding mechanism unless it has a specific plan or is directly tied to a master plan which seeks to take on specifically identified needs through a public process. No on Measure DD.
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