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Mental health and recovery, and DD levies await voters
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County voters will find on the Nov. 3 ballot a 3-mill levy for the county Board of Developmental Disabilities and a 0.5-mill levy for the county Mental Health and Recovery Board.
Both are proposed five-year renewals of existing real-estate tax levies.
The DD board levy, which will appear on the ballot as Issue 6, raises about $11.3 million a year and costs the owner of a $100,000 home $98.45 annually.
The DD board uses the local levy money to serve more than 1,400 developmentally disabled county residents.
The board has been providing educational, vocational and recreational programs for people with developmental disabilities since 1967.
The board’s bus and van fleet travels more than 750,000 miles annually as it transports clients to school, work or recreational activities, officials said.
Levy funds pay for the board’s early childhood intervention program, adult services and transportation. They also are used to match Medicaid dollars.
After a 10-year absence, the Help Me Grow early childhood intervention program for children under age 3 returned to the DD board’s administration from the county’s Educational Service Center this year.
To inform the public about its levy, the DD board has launched a website, www.someoneuknow.com.
“It’s for much-needed services for individuals with developmental disabilities from early intervention and early childhood services, to school age at Leonard Kirtz [School] and then adult services,” said Bill Whitacre, DD board superintendent.
“That helps pay for residential services, transportation, employment services and adult day [care], so it provides a multitude of services for the people with developmental disabilities,” he added.
The Mental Health and Recovery Board levy, first approved in 1976, raises $915,489 annually and costs the owner of a $100,000 home $5.56 annually. It will appear on the ballot as Issue 4.
The board’s 0.85-mill levy, which was replaced in 2003, expires at the end of 2019.
The two levies supply a combined total of about $4.1 million a year.
The board also receives $3.6 million annually in state funds.
The Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board was created by the Feb. 23 merger of the county’s Mental Health Board and Board of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services.
“It’s quite evident that the need is out there. We’re providing services not only for behavioral health, for mental health, but also for recovery,” said Duane J. Piccirilli, executive director of the combined board.
The board funds suicide prevention and substance-abuse prevention education programs for youths and funds mental health screenings in schools, he said.
“We’re in the schools. We’re working with the elderly. We’re working with grief” counseling and providing mental health and recovery services in the jails, he added.
“With the combined board now, we’re able to use our levy dollars to put more programs in the jails,” Piccirilli recently told the county commissioners.
In a legal opinion requested by county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine concluded that the levy money may be used for both mental health and substance-abuse recovery programs as long as the expenditure is consistent with the authorizing tax law and the levy’s authorizing resolutions and ballot language.
The county Mental Health and Recovery Board funds agencies that provide mental health and alcohol and drug addiction recovery services to indigent and underinsured county residents.
The board’s 2016 priorities are securing safe and affordable housing, strengthening services to children, increasing access to state and local hospital beds and strengthening its collaboration with the criminal justice system.