When parents in the small town of Warren, Minn., realized that the only day care center in town was full and struggling to stay afloat, they took matters into their own hands.
"So as community leaders we said, 'OK, we need to sit down and we need to dig into this problem," city administrator Shannon Mortenson tells Minnesota Public Radio.
What they came up with: a half-cent sales tax.
Voters narrowly approved the tax in November, and the Little Sprouts child care center, which had seven families that would have had to move if the day care center closed, is still open.
Mortenson says the tax will help keep the center open and allow it to expand.
MPR reports that a supply/demand analysis found a shortage of 187 child care slots within a 20-mile radius of Warren.
And more than 30% of survey respondents said they had turned down a job or left the workforce because of child care issues.
Phil Thompson, chair of the Warren Economic Development Authority, says the issue is limiting economic growth.
"If you can't hire young people to come to work, young accountants, because they can't get day care and they won't move here, then that affects the bottom line because we can't grow,"
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.