The Washington County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Board is asking for community support for its mental healthy levy before ballots are even printed - with a little compassion the only requirement for volunteers.
It will be the second attempt this year to pass the 1-mill, five-year levy to fund services for children, and board director Ron Rees said too many people weren't aware of the effort in March.
Election day is Nov. 4.
"We're trying to do something new and solicit some supporters and get more people involved," Rees said. "We're looking for people to talk to people they already know about the levy. We're not asking volunteers to talk to strangers."
Supporters don't need to be experts on the levy or the services to get involved but simply understand that there's a need, Rees said. The board will provide any information needed.
"I think there is support out there," he said. "We had a surprising number of people come to us after the last election that didn't know about the levy and wanted to help."
One hundred percent of the $1 million the levy would generate each year would fund services for children that the board isn't able to provide now.
The demand for Medicaid services has tripled in the past few years, and the mental health board is mandated to provide the match for those services, meaning there is little money left for non-Medicaid services.
"For working families, there's just not much coverage," Rees said. "And (a levy) is the only legal way we have to raise more money."
Seventy-four of Ohio's 88 counties already have levies to provide money for mental health services.
"It's a huge resource that's used statewide but not here," Rees said. "Asking for just the funding for services for children is a compromise we're making with the community, because we know people have a limited amount of support they can give."
The owner of a $100,000 home would pay $30.63 a year if the levy passes.
If it does pass in November, though, that money won't go as far as was expected during the last levy campaign, due to a $600,000 cut in state funding for the board and more cuts expected. That's more than 10 percent of the board's budget.
"Unfortunately we won't be able to do as many of the innovative things we had planned," Rees said.
The levy funds would help cover residential treatment for children and in-home intensive treatment, services not covered by Medicaid, and allow the board to serve more children each year.
Only 766 of the estimated 1,336 children who needed mental health services in Washington County were actually able to be helped by the board in 2007 and only 89 of the 492 children ages 12 to 17 received the treatment they needed for drug and alcohol issues, Rees said.
