Important Corrections and Clarifications

The Week 10 Lowdown PDF uploaded Friday, October 29 has been corrected in the current files on the Lowdown website. The corrected PDF was also mailed to delegates who receive the PDF.

The corrections include:

Lowdown Welcome/Intro

• Under Short and Long-Term Economic Outcomes: the language was changed to better reflect the rationale for why short and long-term economic outcomes were not provided and to clarify that those outcomes aren’t included in the Local Return on Spending.

Action 3

• A typographical error was fixed in the title (Childcare Provider Fud became Childcare Provider Fund)

• The subtitle read “Kids Program Connector” when it should have read “Childcare Provider’s Fund”

• Under Local Return on Spending, the numbers and dollar amounts were missing. These were added.

Action 4

• The subtitle read “Kids Program Connector” when it should have read “Carebucks.”

• A link to an older version of the Economic Analysis Plan was included. The corrected link is now included.

Here’s the definition of a childcare desert: "A child care desert is any census tract with more than 50 children under age 5 that contains either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots." (https://childcaredeserts.org/2018)

So, technically, that’s accurate for Montrose. But it’s also been criticized as an overly evocative term because the majority of Americans (51%) also live in this definition of a “childcare desert.”

A 2020 study by Ready Nation in Colorado estimates the annual costs of insufficient childcare on Colorado parents, employers, and taxpayers to be $2.17 billion (in lost earnings, productivity, and tax revenue). Applying the statewide estimate to the population of the city of Montrose results in $7,595,000. Applying the same to the whole county population yields $16,150,786 in annual costs.

Please note: this is a correction to the lower estimate of $6 million that was used in the lowdown videos.

According to the Root Policy Research team, “We were using 2019 ACS at the time (Census wasn’t out yet). That said, the 2019 ACS says 2600 kids so it seems our sample is actually about a third of the county population. Stating it was half seems to be an error (looks like our analyst compared number of kids in survey to households with kids in the ACS—its half of that number, but that isn’t the right comp).”

You saw a stat in the Status Quo Lowdown that said “87% of parents in Montrose had challenges in finding or using childcare”’ The actual quote from the Assessment was ‘87% of the respondents’. This is now corrected in the Lowdown website.

Correction: In the Camp Montrose budget, a winning Delegate Improvement changed the action to begin with 3 schools, rather than all 9 elementary and middle schools. On row 27 of that budget, the School District Facilities Cleaning had not been updated from 9 schools to 3 schools. That has been corrected lowering the overall estimated budget from $270,000 to $240,000. For clarity, that budget factors in revenue to offset costs.