Dallas Voters Won't Get a Say on Childcare.  DAI Will Perdure.

[Excerpts]

Walker Moore says he often reminds his fellow organizers of the word “perdure,” which, he tells them, means “to endure over an incredibly long period of time.”

The last year explains why. Moore, the lead organizer for Dallas Area Interfaith, helped align his roughly 30 congregations and schools with the United Way and a few childcare providers to form the Dallas Childcare Works Coalition. The group collected more than 4,750 signatures in support of adding a special tax rate increase to the November ballot to make childcare accessible to more parents. County commissioners had until August 11 to agree to send it to voters for consideration. Supporters packed the gallery during commissioner’s court in May and sent so many emails staffers asked them to lay off. 

But the special tax — a 3-cent rate increase that would have raised about $132 million a year — wasn’t added to an agenda for discussion before the deadline. Despite the coalition’s work, voters won’t get the chance to weigh in on whether they want to fund childcare.

“I’m looking at the list now. This wasn’t just one commissioner’s district or one demographic,” Moore says. “Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Protestant. It’s schools, Black congregations, white, Latino. It’s most of the ZIP codes in Dallas County. It tells me there was a huge appetite in Dallas County.”...

The tax was designed to provide a sustained funding source to offer “scholarships” for families right as the Texas Workforce Commission began warning about rising childcare costs and stagnant or declining public funding that will likely mean thousands of parents won’t receive the benefit.  

What comes next? Moore says the group will do some soul-searching “at what we missed and what else can be done.” But he wants to prove the coalition’s power this November. He’s analyzing voter turnout in precincts near the congregations and schools affiliated with Dallas Area Interfaith. Where can they do better? Where can they establish new voting blocs? There is an immigrant congregation in West Dallas, for instance, located in a precinct with 3,500 registered voters but “fewer than a third of them vote.”

“This was the first time they were in a fight like this,” Moore says, “the first time they’ve gone from spectators to participants.”

“Perdure” dates to the 15th century, a Middle English word defined by some dictionaries as to “continue to exist,” with no endpoint. For Moore, it’s a reminder of the work that always remains.

Introducing 'Above the Fray': What Happened to the Childcare Tax?, The Lab Report Dallas [pdf]