Supporting Our Community
In April 2020, Anchorage voters supported a bold, practical solution for addressing Anchorage’s most pressing problems: a new sales tax on alcoholic beverages sold in the Municipality, with revenue dedicated as new funding toward specific issues:
1. Increasing community safety (“police, related criminal justice personnel, and first responders”)
2. Reducing and preventing child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence
3. Prevention and treatment of substance misuse, mental health issues, and homelessness
For all three dedicated uses, alcohol tax revenue is being used not only to respond to crises but to get upstream and prevent them.
Prevention is proven to work and has a strong return on investment (ROI). But it will take time to see meaningful improvement on these challenging issues. We are committed to using alcohol tax funds to achieve long-term benefits, and to measuring and reporting out our progress.
That includes outcomes reported from tax-funded programs, as well as using community-level health measures to track over time whether and how the community has improved.
A key issue not highlighted in the ballot measure directly, but relevant to all three areas of funding, is addressing inequity in our community: how structural racism and other barriers impact some people more than others.
The cumulative effects of racism have created persistent disparities, and significantly and directly contributed to worse outcomes over generations for Black, Indigenous and other Peoples of Color (BIPOC). By eliminating race-based disparities in health and well-being, Anchorage will be safer and healthier for everyone.
COMMUNITY-WIDE GOALS
1. Increased citizen and neighborhood-level engagement in selecting measures and other Municipal decision-making.
2. Measurable improvement in health, education, corrections, housing and other key measures of safety and well-being, and elimination of race-based disparities in same measures.
3. Measurable improvements in social determinants of health and equity.
4. Increase wealth generation and prosperity in neighborhoods with many households living in poverty.
5. Children and adults are free of the burdens created by alcohol and substance misuse.
6. Reduce rates of child maltreatment.
7. Reduce rates of sexual assault and domestic violence.
8. Reduce number of people and length of time experiencing homelessness.
9. Decrease number of people with behavioral health conditions held in jails.
10. Reduce suicide deaths of youth and adults.
