Routt County families are spending nearly three times the federally recommended share of their yearly income on child care, with average costs consuming about 20% of household earnings, according to a First Impressions of Routt County report presented to county commissioners Monday.

Local families spend up to 16-28% of their yearly income on child care, according to the report. The federal recommendation for households to spend on child care is 7%.

“In the fall of 2023, First Impressions commissioned a needs assessment,” said First Impressions Executive Director Meg Franges during the Monday work session. “This wasn’t anything that was shocking to anyone. We have a capacity problem in our community, and it’s expensive.”

“We wanted to understand the current reality for families in terms of dollar amounts,” Franges continued. “We know that it’s hard to find spots, but what does this cost?”

With a median annual household income in Routt County of around $104,803 and an average annual child care tuition cost of around $21,166, most Routt County families are spending an average of 20% of their yearly income on child care.

First Impressions of Routt County — an organization that seeks to provide resources for Routt County young children, families and educators to promote healthy development and school readiness — broke down the local child care crisis for Routt County commissioners through a cost modeling project.

The organization partnered with a Longmont-based social policy research consulting firm focusing on early childhood development, Brodsky Research and Consulting, to develop the cost modeling project, analyzing what Routt County families pay for child care.

The report shows there are about 1,222 children age 6 and younger in Routt County in 2025, with only 16 licensed providers actively providing care in the county.

Franges noted that if 75% of the 1,222 young children in the county need care, that means over 900 children require child care services. With 647 slots available when licensed child care facilities are fully staffed, nearly 270 children are left without access to licensed, high-quality care.

“This number is significantly lower than any of the data that are in the reports,” Franges added during the commissioners’ work session. “That’s because (when we did) data collection for both of these reports, we had more child care centers. Since these have been completed, we have lost Young Tracks and we have lost a couple of family child care homes.” 

The report also found that 57% of Routt County providers do not offer summer child care, leaving many families without accessible options in the summer months.

Of the child care centers in Routt County, most providers allocate the majority of their capacity for mixed-age preschoolers, leaving little room for infants and toddlers.

Among Steamboat’s licensed 434 slots for young children, only 6% are dedicated to infants and 16% are dedicated to toddlers. Ten percent of Hayden’s 89 slots allow for infants, and 33% allow for toddlers, according to the report.

Notably, North Routt only has 5% of its 44 slots dedicated to toddlers, and none for infants. South Routt does not have any dedicated infant or toddler slots.

According to Franges, these disproportionate ratios for infants and toddlers have a lot to do with the demands of providing care and licensing requirements.

“This really comes down to, it’s expensive to provide infant care,” said Franges during the work session. “The ratios are incredibly small — one teacher to every five babies. They require significantly more materials, cribs, strollers, all of these things. And just the physical space for licensing also requires a lot more modification.”

“… Cost-effectively, it just doesn’t work,” continued Franges. “(For) the centers that are successful with providing infant care, they have preschool as well, because that can help subsidize it. Additionally, our successful centers in doing this have big backers — the hospital, the mountain — they are able to provide this as a benefit to their employees and see it as a positive thing, rather than just a lot of red on the budget.”

According to the report, child care is often the second-highest expense for American families, after housing.

In Routt County, average monthly tuition costs reach around $1,763 for one child and $3,527 for two children. For many local families with two children, monthly spending for child care is around 40% of their monthly income.

When analyzing the average costs for child care in Routt County, Franges noted that these costs are for “high-quality care,” rather than “low-quality care.” 

Because high-quality care facilities don’t cut corners in providing care, they naturally have higher operational costs. Franges said this type of care is incredibly important and should be the standard for child care.

“(High-quality care) is a prevention strategy,” added Franges. “If we have children in high-quality care, they are building resilience, and we are reducing costs later in life. We’re actually really setting these children up to be on a path for lifelong success.”

The total cost of high-quality care for the entire county comes to $17.5 million per year, if 75% of young children were provided care in fully-staffed facilities, according to the report.

If Routt County families dedicated only 7% of their annual income to child care tuition, $7 million would be collected countywide. With current subsidies totaling $2.1 million and grants totaling $75,000, an $8.3 million gap remains in the total cost of care.

In addition to the lack of funding for high-quality care, housing issues continue to drive young families away from Routt County.

Franges argued that affordable housing and accessible child care go hand-in-hand, and Routt County cannot have one without the other.

“One of the things that’s really important when we have these conversations is our community is very focused on housing, but there is no sense in continuing to build housing if you do not address child care,” said Franges. 

” … Who do we actually want to access these houses?” Franges continued. “Because if it’s people who may be younger families who want to have children — and if we do not have child care — they are going to leave, and we’re just going to have a continuous revolving door of people coming and going.”

Moving forward, Franges told the Steamboat Pilot & Today that First Impressions plans on bringing the issue to Routt County municipalities for further support.

During Monday’s work session, Routt County Commissioner Tim Redmond voiced concerns about funding child care falling solely on the county.

“It feels like so much of this is pushed onto the county,” said Redmond. “When I look at some of the other players in our community — the city of Steamboat Springs, our large employers — I’m going to tell you, I’m disappointed with their efforts and their support in this situation.”

In an interview with the newspaper, Franges noted that presenting the report to the county commissioners is only the first step in a “roadshow” for First Impressions.

“I think that this is a shared responsibility among all of us,” Franges said. “I think we need to get everybody to the table to determine what some tangible solutions are to this problem … The timing is right because we have elections coming up. As we are vetting the candidates for elected positions, this is something that needs to be on their minds.”

“Child care is doing double duty,” Franges added during the work session. “We’re supporting kiddos, but we are also allowing families to work. This really is something that I think we need to shift in thinking about child care … This is an economic driver for our community.”

To view the full report, visit Tinyurl.com/48y9sfrk.