Election 2026: Measure P childcare tax would raise $12.5 million a year for Marin programs
Owners of a 2,000-square-foot house would pay about $100 a year for 15 years to subsidize childcare in Marin and raise pay for the people who provide it if county voters approve Measure P on Nov. 3.
The tax is 5 cents per square foot of what the ordinance calls structural improvements, meaning building floor area, with no more than 100,000 square feet of any single parcel taxed. Land is not taxed, only what is built on it, and beginning in the tax’s second year supervisors may raise it each year by the Bay Area consumer price index. The county estimates it would raise about $12.5 million a year, and there are no exemptions for seniors or low-income owners.
The ordinance directs the money to three things — subsidizing care for what it calls low- and middle-income children and families, raising provider pay and building and expanding facilities as needed — and sets no required share for any of them.
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Money would go into a special county fund, and the Marin County Children and Families Commission, the nine-member body supervisors appoint, would write a five-year program plan and budget and allocate the proceeds. Supervisors would still have to appropriate the money each year, and they may replace the commission with another agency. The measure creates an 11-member advisory council, also appointed by supervisors, to recommend the plan and review an annual independent audit, and it caps administration at 5% of what the tax brings in.
Because Measure P, the Marin County Child Care Initiative, began as a citizens’ petition rather than as a measure proposed by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, it passes on a simple majority instead of the two-thirds California ordinarily requires of a special tax.
Measure CC, a separate 30-year parcel tax on the same ballot, would charge property owners in the Marin Healthcare District, which takes in all three peninsula communities, 14 cents a square foot to expand the emergency room and intensive care at MarinHealth Medical Center. If both measures pass, a Tiburon, Belvedere or Strawberry property owner would pay 19 cents a square foot between them — by Ark calculation, $380 a year on a 2,000-square-foot house in the first year. Measure P’s share could rise each year with inflation; Measure CC’s is fixed. The county and the healthcare district project the two would raise about $24.9 million a year combined.
If it passes, Measure O, a $115 million Reed Union School District bond on the same ballot, would add to what Tiburon and Belvedere owners pay. It is levied on assessed value rather than building size, at an estimated peak of $30 per $100,000, or $300 a year for each $1 million of assessed value. Strawberry is outside the Reed district.
Supporters say too many Marin families cannot find or afford childcare.
Their ballot argument says “52% of Marin children ages 0-12 with working parents lack access to licensed preschool.” It also says long waiting lists and high costs force parents to cut work hours or leave the workforce. The argument was signed by pediatrician Nelson Branco, business leader Patty Garbarino, public-health physician Matt Willis, former county schools Superintendent Mary Jane Burke and League of Women Voters of Marin County President Becky Bingea, and it names Rep. Jared Huffman, state Sen. Mike McGuire, Assemblymember Damon Connolly, all five supervisors and the county Democratic Party among the measure’s supporters.
Tiburon Councilmember Alice Fredericks, herself on the Nov. 3 ballot, has endorsed the measure and gave the campaign $250, according to its campaign finance filing. She is the only Tiburon, Belvedere or Strawberry elected official on the campaign’s endorsement list.
Fredericks said she knows the difficulty of finding childcare firsthand.
“Over a half century ago, when I was a single parent, I faced that challenge successfully thanks to a California statewide preschool program that provided trained affordable childcare,” she said in an email.
Peninsula childcare centers have as much trouble recruiting trained staff as any in Marin, she said.
“Availability of childcare workers gives all families more childcare, infant care and home care options, especially benefiting our public-service workers such as teachers, nurses and emergency workers who find it a challenge to live here,” she said.
Opponents argue the measure sets a target for only one of its three uses: wage parity with transitional kindergarten through 12th-grade public-school teachers. Scholarships “may” be funded and facilities are addressed “as needed,” the argument says. It also says the measure defines no income threshold for “low- and middle-income” and requires no Marin residency of the families, children or workers who benefit.
“Fifteen years funding a program that voters can’t measure, run by an unelected commission, is too much to ask,” the argument against reads. It was signed by Marin residents Susan Morelock, John Turnacliff, Amanda Beyer and Francis Droulliard and by resident and business owner Tief Gibbs. Turnacliff, a Strawberry resident, chairs the Marin County Republican Central Committee and is running for the Richardson Bay Sanitary District board on the Nov. 3 ballot, while Gibbs, a Novato resident, is running for state Senate against Connolly.
The campaign’s online FAQ answers the lack of a fixed split.
“A rigid formula written today could prevent the community from responding to changing costs, workforce shortages, demand for scholarships or the need for additional childcare spaces years from now,” it says, pointing to the five-year plan, the annual budget, the advisory council and the audit as the checks that replace a fixed split.
“Measure P does not include separate senior or income-based property-tax exemptions,” the FAQ says. It notes the tax is based on building square footage rather than property value.
Lucy Dilworth, a board member of the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers who signed the opponents’ rebuttal, said the missing split is the problem.
“Voters are entitled to know where their money is going before they vote — not after. If a measure can’t say that upfront, it’s a blank check,” she said in an email.
The coalition could support a childcare tax that supervisors put on the ballot rather than one that arrives by petition, Dilworth said. It would have a 5- to 10-year term, guarantee 60% to 70% for direct family assistance, write an income threshold in dollars into the ordinance, set measurable targets such as a number of new subsidized slots and offer exemptions or discounts for seniors and lower-income homeowners.
Joanne Webster, board president of Our Kids Our Future, the committee backing the measure, did not estimate how much of the money would reach Tiburon, Belvedere and Strawberry.
“The five-year plan will determine how resources are allocated based on demonstrated need, with annual appropriations subject to Board of Supervisors approval,” she said in an email.
Webster said specific eligibility criteria, including an income line, would be developed in that plan.
“We believe Marin families should be the priority, and we would expect residency and other appropriate eligibility criteria to be carefully considered as that plan is developed,” she said.
The scholarship money is aimed at children from birth through age 5, a narrower band than the 52% figure the campaign cites, which counts children up to 12. The ordinance does not define low- and middle-income. It says access may be expanded through scholarships on a sliding scale based on family income, with priority for children who are homeless or from what it calls historically under-resourced communities. The wage goal is a direction rather than a number: The plan must provide for moving “toward the goal of parity with public TK-12 educators with similar experience and responsibilities.”
The measure bars the money from replacing childcare spending already in the county’s and the commission’s fiscal 2025-2026 budgets unless state, federal or other non-county funding for those services is cut by the same amount, and it cannot be amended without another vote.
Proponents filed their notice of intention Jan. 28 and turned in signatures June 3. The registrar certified the petition June 17, and supervisors placed the measure on the ballot July 14.
In their rebuttal to the supporters’ ballot argument, opponents said the campaign had reported $778,305 in donations, more than half from outside the county. The committee’s own filing bears that out. Our Kids Our Future PAC reported raising $778,305 from Jan. 1 through June 30, and $397,500 of it, or about 51%, came from donors with addresses outside Marin, led by $190,000 from the Children’s Funding Accelerator of Washington, D.C., $100,000 from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria of Rohnert Park and $75,000 from the Heising-Simons Action Fund of Los Altos. The largest single contribution, $250,000, came from the Marin Community Foundation.
Supporters, in their own rebuttal, called the opposition signers “some of Marin’s most MAGA extremists” and said every dollar must stay in Marin, spending must be approved by supervisors and the audits and public reporting will show whether the program works.
Reach Executive Editor Kevin Hessel at 415-435-2652.