Normal City Manager Pam Reece says some of the mental health and behavioral health initiatives McLean County runs are, in effect, pre-funded.
Reece said that’s why the town and the City of Bloomington have proposed suspending collection of sales tax money the municipalities send to the county for those services and other expenses.
Reece said this is a natural time for a conversation about potential changes because the three governmental entities are about 10 years into the 20-year intergovernmental agreement — and circumstances have changed.
Earlier this week, the McLean County Board Executive Committee declined to green light such a suspension, while recommending an audit of the county’s 1% mental health and public safety sales tax fund. The full board will consider the resolution at its regular meeting on Thursday.
Despite the committee's action regarding the proposed suspension, Reece said, “Now is a good time, if any, to start looking at it, primarily because the county has about a $20 million fund balance, which means the town and the city are distributing about $400,000 a month to the county, between the two of us.”
She said the county has had great success securing grants and ARPA funding [American Relief Plan Act] for behavioral health. And another factor has contributed to the accumulation of money in the fund.
“Since the intergovernmental agreement was adopted, the sales tax revenue stream changed a bit, and internet sales now add to the sales tax. The county has been receiving more than we had anticipated when we entered into this agreement back in 2016,” said Reece.
She said those factors combined to prompt a discussion of the agreement, and whether it continues to say what the community needs it to say, or whether it should be tweaked.
"Since January-February, there's been a lot of conversations, primarily associated with how long of a pause should we have in sharing the revenues? Should we wait till the county draws down some of that ... $20 million fund balance? You know, those sorts of conversations. What's the appropriate amount in the future to be shared? Is it always going to be a quarter of the 1% sales tax?” said Reece.
Some of the money goes to debt service on the expansion of the county jail. Some goes to an overhaul of the aging Integrated Justice Information Service [IJIS] in the county that also benefits police agencies. Some goes to behavioral health programming in the jail. And other money goes to mental and behavioral health services throughout the community.
Currently, the county is updating the behavioral health action plan, Reece noted, that will be part of the conversation on whether to revise the agreement.
Not the intent
Reece said the proposed pause in city and town sales tax distribution to the county is not a backdoor way of killing the agreement.
“That would be absolutely not at all what the intent is,” she said. “We have no intention of negatively impacting how these revenue streams can positively affect our behavioral health services in our community ... our primary goal is get the folks to the table. Let's talk about this again.”
Changing the agreement or suspending collection of money before it runs out in another decade requires agreement by all the signees. She said changes require the parties to come together and discuss in good faith.
In the first decade of the pact, Reece said the town and city have distributed $40 million to the county. She said assessing how much above expectations that sum was requires analysis.
“Did we intend for any of this to appear negative and like we're trying to take anything away? No, that's certainly not the intent. On the flip side, we thought this was an opportunity to have these conversations when the county has a significant fund balance, good collaborative conversations," she said.
"The agreement from 2016 lays out the parameters of how the three parties can have these discussions, and so that's how we thought we were moving forward. Our best bet is to continue to continue to move forward collaboratively.”
She said the town remains committed to the Behavioral Health Action Plan Implementation once it's adopted.
Even if the city and town were to get county agreement to suspend payments, Reece said it’s not clear how the town would repurpose the money.
“I would budget those dollars as directed by my city council. But we're not there yet. We've got much to discuss in terms of ... where we should land with the town, the county and the city,” she said, adding there is no set timeline for wrapping up the discussion and assessment of the existing agreement.
“While there's no rush, there certainly is, I think this seems like a good opportunity to talk about these ... issues, a lot of these questions,” said Reece.
