Bowen: It’s time to invest in Pasco’s children

There are 477 children in Pasco County on a waiting list for subsidized day care so their parents can work or go to school without worrying about their offspring.

More than 41,000 kids — nearly 55 percent of the students attending Pasco public schools — qualify for free or reduced-price meals because of their families’ incomes.

In Pasco, 8.5 percent of the babies born in 2017 were underweight at birth. That is an increase from 7.6 percent two decades earlier. Those children are more at risk of dying before their first birthday and could have a harder time learning to eat, gain weight and build their immune systems.

They are sobering statistics, particularly in a county with nearly 540,000 residents enjoying a booming economy with low unemployment. But it also is a community where nearly 90,000 households are struggling to pay for basic needs, according to the United Way. That number, too, is on the rise.

At least it’s not all grim. Infant mortality rates across Florida are down more than a third since then-Gov. Lawton Chiles formed Florida Healthy Start 18 years ago to invest in pre-natal and after-birth care.

Now, Jack Levine, the Tallahassee-based children and family services advocate, thinks it’s time for more investment. Last week, he challenged the 50 or so people at the Healthy Start Coalition of Pasco to do just that. Levine believes Pasco voters should consider a referendum to tax themselves for children’s services.

Such an investment, Levine said, “is not an amorphous-reasoning thing. It’s not a statistical thing. It’s a humanity thing.”

This isn’t a ground-breaking idea. The Pinellas Juvenile Welfare Board dates to 1946. Hillsborough County followed suit in 1990. And Alachua County voters just approved a Children Services Council last year. Currently, there are nine councils around the state with the authority to levy property taxes to aid children.

Pasco voters turned down a Children’s Services Council in 1990 — the same year Hillsborough voters approved their version. It lost in Pasco by 4 percentage points. Advocates tried again in March 1992, but faced a severe push-back from Republican activists. Seventy percent of the voters rejected the referendum.

One of the leading advocates then was Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper. She retired from her full-time job on the bench last year, but hasn’t retired from public life. Listening to Levine at the Land O’ Lakes Community Center, she raised her hand and volunteered to again champion the Children’s Services Council effort here.

The leading critic in 1992 was Mike Fasano, then a partisan pitbull who had yet to hold elected public office. Today, he is Pasco’s tax collector after 18 years in the state Legislature. Last year, he added a consumer advocate to his staff because of the number of needy people contacting the Tax Collector’s Office for assistance.

“There’s no question it should go before the voters,” Fasano said in an interview. “I think the voters should be educated with enough information as possible on how it will benefit Pasco County. That is key.”

He also noted that the Pasco of 2019 — with homelessness, poverty, stagnate wages and blue-collar workers living paycheck to paycheck — is a much larger and more diverse population than the retiree-heavy Pasco of 1992. The needs are greater now.

Levine urged the coalition members to consider a 2022 or 2024 referendum, though it likely could bump against the question of renewing the Penny for Pasco sales tax. That tax for schools, transportation, public safety, environmental preservation and economic development expires in 2024. Voters are expected to be asked in 2022 to consider extending it for 10 more years.

The date, though, isn’t as important as the mission: To expand help for children.

“What are we waiting for?” Levine asked.

Indeed. Babies born the year Pasco voters last considered the Children Services Council are now 27. Maybe they’d like to have a say.

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