Colorado Childcare Tax Relief Is Local Control Doing Something Useful

Colorado Public Radio, publishing a Chalkbeat Colorado story by Ann Schimke, reports that Adams County and Douglas County have become the first two Colorado counties to use a recent state law to offer property tax relief to childcare providers. The political contrast is hard to miss: Adams County’s commissioners are all Democrats, Douglas County’s commissioners are all Republicans, and both landed on the same practical idea. Imagine that. Problem-solving without first checking whether the bumper sticker matches.

The rebates are meant to help stabilize childcare providers facing rising costs, the end of COVID-era stimulus money, enrollment challenges, and brutal overhead. Both counties are offering extra help to providers serving infants and toddlers, which is exactly where care can be hardest to find and most expensive to provide.

Kudos to my fellow commissioners in both Adams and Douglas Counties. Weld is a childcare desert and suffers from similar problems as our neighbors to the south. This is the kind of idea Weld should take seriously, not because government can magically fix childcare with one rebate, but because targeted relief for providers may help keep doors open, classrooms staffed, and families working.

The Bullet Point Brief

• Adams and Douglas counties are using a 2024 state law that allows counties to offer tax credits or rebates for local challenges like childcare, housing, job training, and renewable energy. That is local control doing something useful, which is refreshing enough to make a bureaucrat spill his herbal tea.
• The rebates will send hundreds of dollars to smaller providers and thousands to larger ones starting in the second half of 2026. Not a silver bullet. More like a socket wrench. Less dramatic, more useful.
• Both counties will offer 100% rebates on county property taxes for home-based providers and providers with infant and toddler slots. That matters because infant and toddler care is where the business model often looks like it was designed by someone allergic to math.
• Other eligible providers will get 50% rebates in Adams County and 75% in Douglas County. Different politics, different formulas, same basic recognition: childcare providers are getting squeezed.
• About 167 providers in Douglas County and 176 in Adams County could be eligible directly or through their landlords. Both counties are trying the program for one year and will consider renewal. Good. Pilot it, measure it, then decide. Revolutionary concept.

My Bottom Line

This is what practical local government is supposed to look like. Adams County and Douglas County do not agree on much politically, but both looked at the childcare mess and decided providers could use some oxygen. That is not ideology. That is basic county-level common sense, which still appears in the wild from time to time.

Childcare is not just a “family issue” that can be stuffed into a campaign brochure and forgotten until the next ribbon-cutting. It is workforce infrastructure. If parents cannot find care, they cannot work. If providers cannot afford taxes, repairs, staffing, insurance, and rent, they close. Then everybody acts shocked, like the math snuck in through a side door.

Weld needs to look at this seriously. We have families trying to work, employers trying to hire, and providers trying to survive on margins thinner than gas station coffee. I will be making inquiries with my fellow commissioners in Adams and Douglas counties to understand how these programs are structured and whether something similar could work here at home.

This is not about building a giant new government machine with a logo, a dashboard, and twelve people named “coordinator.” It is about asking whether targeted, accountable property tax relief can help stabilize childcare capacity in places where families are already stretched. If it works, learn from it. If it does not, adjust. But doing nothing while families and providers get squeezed is not conservatism. It is just sitting on your hands and calling it principle.

Source: Colorado Public Radio