Last week former Sheriff and former lead advocate for 2017’s “Measure B,” Tom Allman told local media that the pending opening of a 16-bed Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) on Whitmore Lane in Ukiah is a good thing because some mental health patients will be incarcerated for short periods locally instead of being transported to out of county facilities.
“If we treat them here, they see their doctor. Here, their family can visit them. Here, they get follow up treatment. Here they can wake up and have their family bring them their own clothes instead of wearing clothes that — who knows where those clothes have been? Just the overall quality of treatment goes up tenfold, and the cost savings is huge.”
Former Sheriff Allman’s laughably exaggerated “tenfold increase” in the amorphous “quality of care” aside, there’s no evidence of a “huge” “cost savings” stemming from the pending opening of the PHF in Ukiah.
Since the overwhelming passage of Measure B, the “Mental Health Treatment Act” of 2017, there’s still no indication that Mendo has complied or will comply with it, much less that Mendo even cares about complying with it. This, despite a perfect opportunity to do so while making a real difference for the street population that the voters wanted Measure B to address:
“Section 5.180.040. Specific Purpose. … Paragraph D. For a period of five (5) years a maximum of 75 percent of the revenue deposited into the Mental Health Treatment Fund may be used for facilities, with not less than 25 percent dedicated to services and treatment; thereafter 100 percent of all revenue deposited into the Mental Health Treatment Fund shall be used for ongoing operations, services and [substance abuse] treatment.”
At last report, Mendocino County calculated that over $54 million of sales tax revenue has been accumulated in the Measure B fund since it was passed in 2017.
Almost $10 million in expenses have been reported, about 75 percent of which has been spent on facilities. Of that $10 million spent on facilities, almost $5 million was wasted on a four-bedroom house (which should not have cost more than $1 million) next door to the Redwood Community Services admin offices on Orchard Avenue, their eight-bed “Crisis Residential Center.”
The bulk of the rest of that $10 million has been spent on top-dollar architectural services, planning and project management by former CEO Carmel Angelo’s favorite architects, the very expensive Sacramento-based Nacht & Lewis — not remotely related to mental health or substance abuse treatment.
The first five years of Measure B revenue (from April of 2018 to June of 2023) came to about $48 million in revenue. After that the half-cent Measure B Sales Tax increment dropped to 1/8 of a cent. So, using the formula specified by the text of Measure B, that means that not more than 75 percent of the $48 million or $36 million could be spent on facilities and not less than about $12 million on services. Then about $7.5 million ($2.5 million a year) additional also on services, not facilities.
Mendo’s current Measure B budget claims that $1.8 million per year is allocated to “operations.” Most of that appears to be budgeted for the “expanded outreach/mobile outreach teams” (aka the mental health “crisis van,” a useful, but limited, contribution to the mental health system. However, since the crisis van has been funded mainly by non-Measure B grants so far, only $182k of actual crisis van expenses have come from the Measure B fund. This, by the way, is under a Measure B budget column entitled “Budgeted Service or program/operating costs (Min 25 percent).” So even the County’s own budget chart recognizes that a minimum of 25 percent is to be spent on mental health and drug treatment services.)
Other minor “operating expenses” brings the non-facilities Measure B expenses so far in eight years to a total of about $1.5 million, about $800k of which is for “Crisis Assessment and Psychiatric Hospitalization Aftercare $260,000 over 4 years,” which goes to the Schraeders’ Redwood Quality Management Company. The rest has been spent on an ill-defined $130k contract with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), and $421k for Fort Bragg’s popular and effective CARE program.
So only about 10 percent of the (minimum) 25 percent that’s required to be spent on the mandated services has been spent, at most. And if their own budget is to be believed, only $1.8 million more is to be spent this year. (History shows that actual expenses will be less.)
Year after year, Mendo fails to spend anywhere near the amount required by Measure B for treatment services. Why? It can NOT be because of worries about escalating construction costs because the voter-approved text of Measure B requires that at least 25 percent be spent on services.
If the PHF construction cost comes in on or under budget as is currently forecast, Mendo will have even more millions for other Mental Health treatment facilities and services.
The voters who passed Measure B expected that the PHF now near completion on Whitmore Lane would reduce the number of mental patients sent outside the County. But the PHF will not accept anyone under the age of 25 because state law prohibits them being on the same premises as adults. “It also depends on insurance,” emphasized Dr. Jenine Miller, the County’s Behavior Health Director. The insurance providers (Medi-Cal and private companies) have to agree to designate the County’s PHF as a mental health services “provider” before insurance will pay for whatever the PHF may provide. In other words, the PHF, paid for with around $10 million of Measure B money and sold to the public as a way to assist or reduce the number of free-floating street nuts and drug addicts in the County, won’t make any noticeable improvement since the only people admitted to the PHF will be those who are over 25 and whose costs are determined to “reimbursable” (covered by insurance), and at least half of whom will be paying customers from outside Mendocino County,
Which brings us to the point of this financial summary.
One of the main arguments against the recently passed (overwhelmingly) state Proposition 36 (which recriminalized some minor drug and theft crimes as felonies as an inducement for chronic drug offenders to enter treatment) was that there wasn’t enough funding allocated for treatment facilities and services to handle them.
But, as is obvious by the Measure B financial summary, in Mendo at least, there’s plenty of money for whoever enters treatment via Proposition 36.
Based on local booking logs and the Marbut report from a few years ago the number of chronic offenders who might opt for treatment under Prop 36 in Mendocino County is in the low hundreds, certainly a manageable, affordable number.
What there’s NOT plenty of is leadership to take practical advantage of this glaring unaddressed opportunity. The Supervisors, in particular, have never even mentioned Measure B’s requirement that at least 25 percent of the money be devoted to services, despite the tens of millions of unaccountable dollars they routinely hand over to the local homeless and mental health bureaucracies and contractors every year.
Meanwhile the street people that Measure B proponents like former Sheriff Allman said would be addressed by these millions remain, mostly on the streets and along the creeks of Ukiah where they’re quite conspicuous.
Despite the promises and requirements of Measure B, no perceptible dent has been made in the problem. In fact, Official Mendo doesn’t even acknowledge the voters’ requirement.
Meanwhile, if the County’s recently rejuvenated inland anti-homeless camp group, Mendo Matters, is to be believed, the problem is getting worse.
Mark Scaramella is the Managing Editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser and a long-time Observer of county matters.
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