We, the beleaguered, the overwhelmed, the stretched, must take our financial victories over the city where we find them. The mayor has come through for us. That I am typing those words gives me a start, but a pleasant one for a change.

Melvin Carter, our Melvin Carter, will not enact another property tax increase even if a ballot measure providing subsidies for all early child care and early child development passes on Nov. 5.

The mayor likes children. We all like children. Why, children are the last refuge of political scoundrels who think they can tap your purse yet again so long as it’s for the children. But this ill-advised and poorly thought-out ballot measure to provide child care for needy parents calls for creating a dedicated fund that starts at $2 million a year and goes up to $20 million a year after 10 years, when it supposedly would end. Sure it would. That would be property tax money on top of the property tax money already collected, including a 7.9% increase for 2025.

Carter has been consistent in telling the least diverse city council in America it won’t work. The council has ignored him. The measure will be on the ballot, fortunately to no avail.

It won’t work. Not enough kids would be served at $2 million a year and $20 million a year wouldn’t even make a dent. The promises intimated by the ballot language cannot be fulfilled unless the figure is about $110 million a year, according to the mayor.

Carter said the ballot language might as well be telling you that you can buy a new Corvette for $30.

There are so many problems in this proposal that it is difficult to find a beginning. Who would benefit exactly? How? When? If you get assistance, what guardrails are in place to make sure the money gets spent on child care? There is a sliding scale for, apparently, all children to benefit. The children of parents who make $5 million a year? Who would administer this ambitious plan? Are there safeguards against fraud, fraud being all too prevalent in large amounts of Minnesota’s public money?

Would there be metrics in place to measure the program for success and achievement? Or does it just sound good? The principal problem of the modern activist politician is the endless creation of money-draining programs that are never held accountable nor are they able to be measured for success.

The mayor is not at all guiltless, but he has seen a bit of the light. According to the mayor, the city has no staff, systems or infrastructure to absorb such an enormous and unique body of work.

“Assuming new responsibilities for new tasks, like evaluating early education providers and certifying income eligibility,” the mayor wrote in his letter to the council, “would require construction of new support infrastructure, almost entirely from scratch, and would quickly grow into one of the city government’s largest commitments.”

That’s too much even for a mayor who is not shy about spending money. Not to mention:

“As our county and school district already perform such functions at scale,” the mayor wrote, “these new programs would likely duplicate those already funded by taxpayers. Property taxpayers should not be required to fund such systems twice, especially when resources are already limited for traditional city functions like public safety, housing, street maintenance, recreation centers, libraries, etc.”

Hallelujah.

With the mayor thinking like this, we might even see working streetlights one of these days.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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