County discussions on mental health spending are on hiatus, as stakeholders will meet to “refocus, reset, and restart,” said Chair Catherine Metsker just before adjoining McLean County’s roughly hour-long quarterly Behavioral Health Coordinating Council (BHCC) meeting Friday morning.
The BHCC is the advisory board created in 2016 in conjunction with the Mental Health Action Plan (MHAP). Members — including Bloomington-Normal area social service and health stakeholders — meet quarterly to discuss how to spend shared sales tax dollars dedicated to mental health and public safety. At the meeting, County Administrator Cassy Taylor said reserves in the fund total around $3 million.
Metsker said at the meeting that the purpose of the BHCC is to “improve the behavioral health of McLean County residents and create systemic change through innovative programming and strategies.” Currently, she added, it’s failing.
“However, the BHCC is not meeting that mission,” Metsker elaborated.
As a result, she said meetings will cease indefinitely, though funding on any current projects will continue. This would include for resources such as the county’s Frequent User System Engagement program (FUSE).
Metsker did not give clarity on when she planned to start convening entities to discuss the “structure, strategy, objectives, processes and procedures,” nor did she state who would be included in those meetings. She stated “we will work through that and reconvene.”
Metsker told WGLT in an email Monday afternoon that her statement “was clear” and she did not have “further comment at this time.” WGLT sent several clarifying questions, but she did not immediately respond. Multiple messages to Taylor and Director of Behavioral Health Coordination Kevin McCall were not returned.
It’s also still currently unclear if Metsker’s decision was in response to discussion at the Friday BHCC meeting, or if she had written it prior. She appeared to be reading a prepared statement, though a bulk of Friday’s meeting wound up being dedicated to discussion of how the BHCC functions — or how it’s meant to function.
Members started asking these questions during time dedicated to a proposal from the Bloomington-based rape crisis center Stepping Stones, which was asking for a grant to help decrease its growing client waitlist.
At BHCC’s September meeting, YWCA had presented its struggle to meet client demand, but no funding requests were made. Taylor previously said that Stepping Stones was encouraged to apply for a funding opportunity to benefit from the shared sales tax.
Stepping Stones wound up being the only applicant on a resulting Notice Of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) from the BHCC. Taylor also previously told WGLT the rape crisis center’s request was relevant to shared sales tax spending.
However, Susan Schafer, who was one of two BHCC members to vote against the YWCA proposal — which ultimately passed — questioned whether the BHCC should be voting on the matter at all. She said she wasn’t aware the BHCC had identified an area of need to be met. The other member was Donna Boelen, who serves on the Bloomington City Council.
“It’s a much bigger issue, and maybe we don’t go anywhere with this right now because of that,” Schafer said. “Because we, you know, we need to make sure we have a good process with this.”
McLean County Center for Human Services Director Joan Hartman pointed out that this was already the second time BHCC was voting on the issue, and there had never been a question about Stepping Stones’ eligibility before. Hartman urged members to carry through with the vote, but echoed Schafer’s request for clearer guidance going forward.
Other members took the time to express their concerns about misunderstandings surrounding BHCC operations, and Metsker had to clarify that the BHCC is an advisory committee. Taylor added that all funding decisions about the shared sales tax are ultimately made by the County Board itself. BHCC and the Executive Committee both vote on funding recommendations, though they do not have to agree for the board to approve or disapprove.
Town of Normal Council Member Kevin McCarthy said that this was not his initial understanding. He said he believed the BHCC was meant to be the “arbiter” of shared sales tax dollars for mental health and public safety.
“For a long time on this board we didn’t see proposals coming here and and we weren’t spending money,” he later added. “That was concerning to the Town of Normal, frankly, as a funding partner: that money was coming here, and it wasn’t going anywhere.”
He added that he hopes organizations like Stepping Stones continue coming to the county for funding requests.
As of 2022 — which is the last time the county gave a full report on its spending to the City of Bloomington and the Town of Normal on this sales tax spending — the shared sales tax dollars totaled nearly $27.2 million, with Normal contributing roughly $11.5 million of that.
Around $3.7 million had gone specifically toward behavioral health services. $6.6 million had gone toward debt service for the Law and Justice Center expansion (completed in 2019), roughly $1.85 million went to criminal justice services, and $431,709 was spent on developing a new behavioral health database.
Taylor told WGLT in a recent interview that building the database could cost up to $30 million.
Taylor responded to some of the comments in the meeting, saying that the MHAP “doesn’t very well speak to strategic priorities.” She said the group’s focus is unclear because of this. She also alluded to conversations had prior to the meeting on this topic.
“We can do better,” she said.
Exactly how and when is still a question mark.
