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The 0.5-mill, five-year renewal generates about $915,489 a year
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board has begun its first levy campaign since the county’s mental health and alcohol and drug addiction services boards merged Feb. 23.
The decades-old 0.5-mill, five-year renewal mental health levy, which generates an estimated $915,489 a year, was recently placed on the Nov. 3 ballot by Mahoning County commissioners.
An Ohio Attorney General’s Office opinion says the levy may be used for both mental-health and substance-abuse recovery services because “recovery is a subset of mental health,” Duane J. Piccirilli, Mental Health and Recovery Board executive director, told commissioners.
First passed as a mental health levy in 1976, it costs the owner of a $100,000 home about $5.56 a year.
Piccirilli said he and Toni Notaro, compliance and evaluation director for the combined board, will lead the campaign, with assistance from staff and board members, to inform the public that mental health and addiction recovery are often related and can be treated.
“Treatment works and people recover and pay taxes,” Piccirilli said at Monday’s mental health and recovery board meeting.
A second mental health and recovery board five-year, 0.85-mill levy, which expires at the end of 2019, generates about $3.1 million annually.
Mental health and recovery board priorities for fiscal 2016 include securing safe, affordable housing, infusing and strengthening services for children, increasing access to state and local hospital beds, and strengthening collaboration with the criminal justice system, Piccirilli said.
In other action, Piccirilli reported that budget hearings with agencies funded by the mental health recovery board are expected to be completed within a week.
He said the amount of money allocated to each agency, however, depends on how much money is in the state budget for the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services. He said that funding should be known by the July 27 meeting.