The ACCEE Fund Board is currently designing its proposed 2026 (January-December) ACCEE Fund budget. The proposed budget will be shared with the Mayor and Assembly by September 2, 2025, and finalized by the Assembly and Mayor’s office by the end of November. We’d like to hear your thoughts! Please attend one of our meetings (May 29, June 5, or July 1) or email us to provide feedback and help shape the Board’s proposed budget.

We’re also inviting feedback on the Municipality of Anchorage’s Health Department’s proposed changes to Anchorage Municipal Code, Chapter 16.55 (Anchorage Child Care Licensing). Anchorage Health Department staff will present the proposed changes to the Board at its June 5, 2025 meeting and we expect the Assembly to consider these changes and vote at its July 15, 2025 meeting. You can review the proposed Code changes here, the accompanying explanatory memorandum here, and the Summary of Economic Effects (expected cost of the changes) here. Text in [ALL CAPS AND BRACKETED] is proposed to be removed from the Code and all underlined text is proposed to be added. The Board welcomes your feedback and thoughts on the proposed changes before it provides a recommendation to the Assembly and Mayor’s office. Please join us!

ACCEE Fund Overview

Proposition 14 – the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education (ACCEE) Fund – passed with strong support from Anchorage voters in 2023. Proposition 14 dedicated the Municipality of Anchorage’s marijuana tax revenue to support child care and early childhood education. The funds started accumulating in January of 2024 and are being dispersed beginning in 2025, with an estimated $5 million available annually.

The Municipality, under the guidance of the ACCEE Fund Board, is now implementing its first budget, finalized by the Mayor and Assembly in November 2024. This budget lays out ACCEE Fund programs that will be funded in calendar year 2025. The three major programs include: (1) a program to pay for the cost of child care for early education sector employees, in an effort to stop the ongoing reduction of the child care and early education workforce and to open up more early education spots for other families ($1.25M for the second half of 2025); (2) funds for operational assistance for child care and early education entities, via stimulus payments ($2.4M); and (3) funds for pilot projects meant to spur innovation and lead to a more sustainable sector, as well as capital improvement projects ($2M). Funds for all three programs are expected to be released in summer 2025.

This budget was largely based on the ACCEE Fund Implementation Team’s final report and recommended budget for 2025, which was released in September 2024. (The final report is available below; please see the Resources tab for all report appendices, including the recommended budget). The Implementation Team was formed as a temporary entity to lay a foundation for the important work the ACCEE Fund will accomplish in the years to come. The submission of the Implementation Team’s final report and budget recommendations marked the end of this near-year-long, community-directed effort. The ACCEE Fund is now guided and supported by the ACCEE Fund Board.

Jessica Simonsen, Vice Chair of the ACCEE Fund Board and Co-Chair of the Implementation Team, said the following about the final report and resulting budget. “The Implementation Team’s final report reflects ten months of work to understand the problem at hand. The sector is in crisis; the expected $5 million in annual revenue is not enough to fill the deep need for funding throughout the sector, but we must begin somewhere. It’s our belief, building on the feedback of hundreds of parents and practitioners throughout this process, that we should start with improving access, and our proposed budget aims to do that.”