Action 4 Questions

Because people who receive CCCAP already receive support through the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, they would not receive additional support from Carebucks.

(submitted 10/29)

Good catch. You’ve identified an excellent candidate for an exception to the rule established by the Delegate Improvement. This is the kind of question that should be tackled during an Implementation phase.

The purpose of this Deliberation is to capture the ideas the Delegates want to see Montrose pursue. There are several possible ways to fund any public initiative. Please see FAQ “If two-thirds of the Assembly agree on a Plan of Action, who would fund the solution and what are the limitations of that funding?” for further explanation.

Delegates will have a Meetup to review estimated budgets after they have considered all actions. The actions are going to change with Delegate feedback. That is a part of your work, getting rid of actions that collectively you don't like. At that point, the costs can be estimated. The estimated budgets really need to reflect only the actions you like with your changes factored in.

Yes. The concept for Carebucks, as it originally presented, allows any registered organization to accept Carebucks. The requirements for registration would be determined during an implementation phase. But it might, for example, require a registrant to be an organization recognized by the State of Colorado, as opposed to an individual. But maybe not. What are your thoughts on this?

Carebucks are a little different than Montrose Bucks because Carebucks would be a public funded program. In contrast, when a shopper (such as yourself) buys Montrose Bucks, you are rewarded for shopping local during the holiday season, giving you $100 to spend for $80.

Where Carebucks are like Montrose Bucks is that you can use the Montrose Bucks at a number of locations. Carebucks would be funding that is given to parents to then use at the childcare provider of their choice, provided the provider is licensed and registered with the Carebucks program. So it is like Montrose Bucks in that parents have choice in how to spend them.

Carebucks, and any other actions, would include Olathe, because Olathe is within the Montrose valley region. The Unify Montrose deliberation focuses on the Montrose Valley, or the areas that are geographically connected around Route 50 and Route 550.

West end communities, such as Nucla and Naturita, have already been independently working with Bright Futures (Montrose County’s early childhood council) on childcare.

In the implementation phase, Montrose County could convene a deliberation to consider whether solutions in the Plan of the People for the Montrose valley could also be applied to the west end. Or if there are different actions the West End could implement that should be part of a county wide plan. If it appears beneficial to merge the Montrose Valley and West End plans of action into a master Montrose County plan of action, that could be coordinated in 2024 in a way that serves everyone’s needs.

Based on how the Carebucks Action was originally presented, families with lower income would receive more Carebucks and families with greater income would receive fewer. And if a family had high enough income, they would not be eligible for Carebucks at all. The specific cutoffs would be determined at an implementation phase.

The plan right now is to have Carebucks be provided annually. If you think that should change, please email us at montrose@unifyamerica.org and suggest an improvement for Action 4.

As the Carebucks Action stands now, any family can apply to receive Carebucks, and to do so, must disclose their household income. Do you have thoughts on how this action should be improved or changed?

Great question. The current concept is that parents get an allocation that will help them cover the cost of a year of childcare, based on the number and ages of their children and household income. There’s been no discussion of rollover dollars. How do you think it should work?

Carebucks would be distributed based on household income to families that apply for it, or at least that is the Action as originally presented. The distribution mechanism would need to be determined during implementation. It could be paper (which has benefits and tradeoffs) or it could be an electronic system using an app (also benefits and tradeoffs). How do you think the funds should be determined and distributed?

Carebucks would be a type of currency itself - a very limited type of currency. You could use them to pay for childcare and youth programs, but only with organizations in Montrose that are registered to accept it (e.g. licensed childcare centers, licensed homecare centers, Montrose Recreation District, etc.). Carebucks would have no value otherwise.

Families would need to give the Carebucks program permission to confirm their household income with the IRS. At least that is the implementation concept as it exists today. Do you have other thoughts?

In general, when there are customers who need a service and have the money to pay for that service, entrepreneurs show up to provide that service. This includes nonprofit entrepreneurs. The problem right now is that there are customers who have a need for childcare, but entrepreneurs cannot drive down the cost of the service enough to make it affordable for most families with children. Why? Because there is one unavoidable cost with childcare: you need caring, qualified humans to do the work. And humans are expensive. Entrepreneurs can’t replace the humans with technology. Entrepreneurs can’t outsource the work to India or elsewhere overseas.

So, the concept is that if families have both their own money AND supplemental dollars in the form of Carebucks (that can only be used for childcare and youth services), then you have a bigger customer base who can afford what it actually costs childcare providers to deliver their service. Thus, existing providers will be more confident about creating more spots for more kids and new providers will be more confident about opening new facilities.

And that is the theory behind how Carebucks would expand capacity in Montrose.

You need to determine if you believe that theory will work or not.

Great question. What are your thoughts on this?

It is expected that Childcare providers would raise their prices, which currently are artificially low because they are paying their staff very low wages, below or just above the level that qualifies people for poverty assistance, like Medicaid and food stamps. It is the intention of this action to allow parents to be able to afford childcare, according to their level of need, and for providers to be able to pay staff a reasonable wage which improves retention and recruiting. But it is not the intention of this Action to increase childcare prices beyond that. And the organization that distributes Carebucks would have, within the funds it has available, discretion to determine how many Carebucks would be distributed across Montrose annually. Given all that, what are your thoughts on how the group administering Carebucks could prevent inflation?

The Carebucks concept as it stands today is limited to licensed childcare centers, licensed homecare and legitimate youth services organizations. And the organization would need to be registered with the administrators of the Carebucks program, which might have additional requirements. See the previous question for more on that. But if the question is: “Can an unlicensed individual incorporate and therefore be able to register to receive Carebucks?” As the idea stands today, the answer is that this would not be enough to qualify.

Right now, Bright Futures has navigators who help individuals become licensed to run a homecare center. So, the idea of navigators in the childcare space has some precedence, although in this case it is closer to a customer service role. Ultimately, it would require funding, establishing exactly what a navigator would do, hiring one or more people to do it, and iterating on the role and how best to do the job based on real world experience. Do you have thoughts on this?

While it is easy to provide the obvious answer: some will and some won’t. The real question is will there be many more who do than those who don’t?

That is the thing about public problem solving. For most public processes and policies that apply to a lot of people, there are always going to be those who try to cheat the system, or use what they are offered poorly. When you’re dealing with even dozens of people, that’s likely to be true. When you get to hundreds or thousands, it’s nearly a certainty.

The question is: “What percentage of people will that be?” If the people who cheat the system or use it poorly are a tiny minority, then the cost to root them out in dollars and bureaucracy (how hard you make it for everyone else) probably isn’t worth it. If it’s a big enough percentage, then it makes sense to question the viability of the Action itself, or add in some expensive safeguards to limit the problem.

Ultimately, your question is a question for the delegates to answer.

Potentially. And that could work for the families with the lowest levels of income. But as we learned in the Status Quo, there are families, for example, who do not qualify for CCAP because they earn a little too much, but not nearly enough to afford childcare. So, for Carebucks to help everyone who it is intended to help, you probably wouldn’t want to limit it to just those who already qualify for aid.

But ultimately, that’s a decision for the Assembly to make. What do you think?