Now that the Healthy Children’s Fund has existed for 18 months, questions are being asked about how millions of dollars raised from the tax will be used in Whatcom County.
County officials have said that implementation of the fund has taken longer than expected because of the challenges of starting a new government program from scratch, but this spring more than $2 million has been awarded to organizations that serve vulnerable children as the first grants of the ambitious tax-funded program start to roll out.
Passed in 2022 by only 20 votes, the Healthy Children’s Fund (HCF) increased property taxes by 19 cents per $1,000 of assessed value to fund early childhood education, expand child care access and support vulnerable populations. It’s expected to bring in nearly $20 million by the end of this year and a total of $100 million by its renewal date in 2032.
The fund has two components: early childhood learning and care, and support for vulnerable children. Children with housing insecurity often don’t get enough sleep, don’t have access to basic needs and experience high stress levels, all of which hinder their brain development and impact their readiness to learn. The first round of HCF funding seeks to mitigate those issues.
Lydia Place, a local nonprofit that provides services to disrupt the cycle of homelessness, is one of several organizations that will receive funds in the first round of awards from the HCF. The county and nonprofit are still negotiating a contract but hope to reach an agreement by late May or early June. The $960,000 promised to Lydia Place will help catalyze a major expansion for the organization into homelessness prevention for families.
“We want to achieve upstream impacts,” Lydia Place Community Engagement Director Tally Rabatin said. “With three decades of experience working with people, we believe that the best way to eliminate homelessness, especially for families, is to look beyond short-term interventions.”
Mercy Housing NW, Ferndale Community Services and St. Francis Generations have also received award letters from HCF, with grants ranging from $50,000 for infant care to $420,000 for housing stability services. The next round of funding will supply social service nonprofits with basic but cost-prohibitive needs like diapers and formula to distribute to their clients. HCF-funded health department staff have deployed $13 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds for child care, such as start-up costs for 15 new home-based providers.
“Already the funds are being put to work to improve public health,” Whatcom Child Care Coalition convener Meredith Hayes wrote in an email to Cascadia Daily News in April. “Partners are working together to create programs to meet the needs in a way that would never be able to happen without these local funds.”
On May 15 Whatcom County Health and Community Services published a request for proposals to expand the mental health workforce and provide trauma therapy and care coordination to perinatal parents and children 0-5 years old. Other HCF investments that will be rolled out this year include professional development for child care providers, last-minute drop-in child care, and behavioral health and disability services for kids, according to the health department.
But Child and Family Well-Being Task Force co-chair Ray Deck III believes that the county needs to do a better job talking about the goals and accomplishments of the Healthy Children’s Fund.
The task force, an advisory committee that helps oversee the fund’s implementation, gave a progress report to the county council on May 7.
“It was a somewhat surreal experience to learn through the drafting of this report about some of the very good and important work that was already underway that I, as a fairly close observer of the Healthy Children’s Fund, hadn’t heard about,” Deck said. “And if there are things I hadn’t heard about, there’s virtually no chance the public is aware of those things.”
Some want to repeal the measure
A group of Whatcom County residents is seeking to introduce a ballot measure repealing the HCF in the November election, in an effort to lower property taxes.
Ashley Butenschoen, who volunteers as the communications manager for the repeal campaign, told CDN in April the levy’s razor-thin 20-vote winning margin means that the proposition is “something worth taking back to the people — worth pushing back on.”
The repeal campaign was not discussed during the county council meeting, but Child and Family Well-Being Task Force co-chair Colton Kaltenfeldt addressed two misconceptions he’s heard from the public about the HCF.
He specified that the fund does not create government-run child care, and the funds do not automatically funnel to the public school districts. While school districts can apply, private child care providers and social services nonprofits are the primary funding targets.
The task force representatives said there seem to be some roadblocks to program implementation. They recommended that fund administrators simplify the development of requests for proposals, bolster the health department’s staffing and help ensure compliance with the state’s Gift of Public Funds Doctrine, which prohibits giving public funds or benefits to private agencies unless they serve a fundamental purpose.
During another presentation to the county council on May 7, community health and human services manager Ann Beck acknowledged the task force’s concern that the county wasn’t communicating HCF accomplishments to the public but said it was because the health department has been busy “doing the work.”
“We have learned that we are not communicating this as well as we could be, to the task force, to the council, to the community, and part of it is that our heads have been down just trying to plow our way through this and figure out how to make it work, and we’re doing that,” Beck said.
Rabatin, of Lydia Place, agreed that the roll-out might look slow from the outside, but she said when launching a brand new program like the HCF, “it’s important to have thoughtful dialogue to ensure that it’s comprehensive and sustainable.”
She said that Lydia Place is excited to be a part of that conversation, and she believes that through creative preventative measures like those enabled by the HCF, Whatcom County could be a community where family homelessness is eliminated.
“More dollars spent on prevention today means less dollars spent on intervention tomorrow or five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now,” Rabatin said. “Giving families and children the tools for their toolbelt, the resources, the access, reduced barriers — it can really move the needle and save a lot of money. And it can save the community the heartache and headache of visible homelessness in our streets, and reduce the trauma for our neighbors.”
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com.
