It makes no sense.

There really is no other way to interpret a move early last week by four members of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners to stop collecting the county’s voter-approved Early Childhood Services millage. The zeroing of the .253-mill property tax isn’t a done deal until an upcoming second vote at the board’s Tuesday meeting, but there isn’t much reason to believe a preliminary 4-3 party line vote won’t hold.

There are many problems with such a unilateral decision by a small voting majority of an elected board — the least of which is the lack of prior public discussion of the issue that smacks of extracurricular chats between a quorum of board members. Or the fact that four people seem to have decided to usurp the results of a lawful election — all to save about 38 bucks in annual taxes for each $150,000 taxable property value for each of their constituents.

No, setting aside the partisan politics that seem to pervasively steer the Leelanau board, effectively eliminating a tax collection meant to support services for young children and families at this moment betrays a stubborn obliviousness to the forces now impacting both families and businesses across the U.S., and especially in northern Michigan.

Early childhood care and services were decimated during the pandemic, and the lack of day care slots is hobbling the economic recovery both here and abroad. Prior to the pandemic, a 2018 report from the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank, found about half of American families lived in areas where they couldnít find adequate child care services. Those findings have been echoed repeatedly by several examinations of conditions in the Grand Traverse region.

That shortage only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a trade group representing day care workers and operators, found four in five day care center operators are working at reduced capacity because of worker shortages.

The lack of day care slots caused by that reduced capacity is obliterating working families in our region. And if working families struggle, businesses struggle. We know this is happening because we’re witnessing and experiencing it firsthand. Both as employers and as working parents, we know these problems are crushing many of the people whose work keeps the lights on in our communities.

What does this have to do with a tiny tax collection in Leelanau County? Everything.

Rather than engaging in tired ideological chest thumping and hacking away at a relatively small tax they don’t think has been well managed, why don’t Leelanau commissioners find a more effective way to spend that money?

They could be both creative and innovative. They could manage and build something instead of tearing it down. They could be leaders.

They could install a seed program to help startup child care centers get running and help fill the capacity gap in their community. They could launch training subsidies to get child care workers certified and qualified to fill open jobs in local centers. They could help existing day care and preschool programs expand.

They could wield their power, their authority, to help address a problem that is driving working families away from their county and the region. They could do something constructive, something that makes sense.