Snowmass Council Updates Childcare District as New Executive Director Starts

What happens to the quarter-cent sales tax you pay at the grocery store when the funds are supposed to start flowing out the door?

It’s a question that has been hanging over the Snowmass Town Council since voters in Pitkin, Eagle, and Garfield counties approved the Childcare Specialty Tax District back in November 2025. The promise was simple: fund early childhood development services. The reality, as the council learned Monday, is a bit more bureaucratic. The cash is sitting there, waiting for a management team that is finally ready to spend it.

The district, which now operates under the rebranded name Every Child, spans from Aspen to Parachute. It’s an entirely new governmental entity, and according to Interim Executive Director Kathryn Kuhlenberg, they are flying blind.

“This is the first and only special district of its kind, so there hasn’t been a guidebook to work with,” Kuhlenberg told the council. “It’s hard to know the best path forward … There has been a lot of work happening behind the scenes to get the district up and off the ground.”

That work just produced a major result. The district wrapped up its hiring process for a full-time executive director. Samantha Markovitz, currently the early childhood initiatives manager for Eagle County, is set to step into the role at the end of July.

Seat 5 Representative Stefan Reveal called the hiring “a great development.”

Once Markovitz takes the helm, the district can stop just collecting revenue and start figuring out how to disperse it. Right now, the assets are sitting in a Colorado Trust Account while the board builds out initial policies and implements data-gathering projects. Kuhlenberg confirmed the district is “on track” to collect the maximum amount allowed by the initiative in its first year — about $1 million per month.

The urgency is palpable. Kuhlenberg noted that leaders in the early childhood sector are sending a consistent message: this money needs to get out the door.

“We hear consistently from leaders within early childhood that this money needs to get out the door,” she said.

The district has already drafted a mission and vision statement, painting a picture of a future where children flourish and families thrive. The mission is to ensure every child from Parachute to Aspen has a strong foundation for success through accessible, high-quality early childhood education. But turning that vision into actual programming — the kind that feels good for families and providers alike, is tricky.

The challenge lies in the geography. The district covers a massive area with communities that have vastly different needs. Developing a single approach that hits all those points is difficult, Kuhlenberg admitted, but the urgency to do it is shared across the region.

No action was requested of the council at this time. The update was just that: an update. A status report from a district that is still building its engine while the car is already moving.

Stand there long enough and you can feel the tension between the promise of immediate relief for local families and the slow grind of setting up a new bureaucracy. The funds are coming in at a rate of a million dollars a month. The question isn't whether the assets exist, but whether the new leadership can navigate the lack of a guidebook fast enough to matter to the families waiting for help.