“Child care has always come up. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to addressing the issue of child care, and I'm not going to let it fall for $400,000. We’re so close you can almost smell it."
Minnesota often tops lists for most expensive child care in the U.S. Areas outside the Twin Cities metro lost more than 20,000 child care slots between 2000 and 2020.
The county is in the midst of a historic shortage of child care. A study conducted by First Children’s Finance on behalf of the City of Worthington in 2021 found a shortage of 500-700 child care slots, with 48% of the need in infant and toddler categories.
Commissioner Gene Metz asked fellow board members if they thought the program should have an upper dollar limit on what applicants could get a tax break on. He said there were several $800,000 to $1 million homes being built in his district.
Both candidates for governor in South Dakota have an expansion of child care in the state as part of their campaign messaging. Some providers in the childcare industry say the secret to improving supply is a re-evaluation of licensing requirements that exacerbate staffing shortages and make entry costs prohibitively high in some cases.
