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The Public Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, November 3, 2003, @ 6:30p.m. in the Administration Building’s Conference Room East. Chairman Marlene Allen called the meeting to order. Members present were Pat LaVigne, Eric Johnson, Julia Fullerton, Sue Leifheit, Eileen Dubin, Robert Rosemier and Richard Osborne. Steve Faivre and Jeff Metzger were absent. Others present were Steve Slack, Kenneth Johnson, Mary Olson and Jerry Lane.

Moved by Ms. Fullerton, seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to approve the October 2003 minutes.

Moved by Ms. Leifheit, seconded by Mr. Rosemier, and it was carried unanimously to approve the agenda.

Mr. Ken Johnson, DeKalb County Public Defender, said that his caseload numbers are about the same amount at the same time last year. The amount of cases has not increased substantially except for misdemeanors and a slight bump up in juvenile cases. The juvenile cases seem to be a lot more serious over the last few years.

Mr. Rosemier asked about the 218 felony cases opened in one month. Mr. Johnson said that there seems to be a high number of drug offenses, but that you have to remember too, that many cases used to be misdemeanors, but now are classified as felonies. Other reasons would be for probation violations, non-payment of fines, failing of a random drug test, etc.

Chairman Allen said that since Ms. Gilmour is not here this evening due to illness, that if the committee members have any questions pertaining to her reports to please call her and she will be happy to answer them.

Her advisory board approved the proposal for her Grant Application without the amount filled out. They had to write with the application the worst-case scenario, which would show that they only kept her in-house programs. The Block Grant lobbyist in Washington said that it looks really good right now and that the Senate has put them in their budget right now with a slight increase, but that she doesn’t expect that increase to stay at the end of the budget process. Therefore, she did not bring the grant since she doesn’t know what the amount will be for the county board to approve.

Regarding the Senior Services Tax Levy Application, Ms. Olson passed out a copy of the application to the committee members for discussion on whether or not to amend it if needed. Ms. Olson explained that the agencies report how they have spent the awarded funds, monthly. Some with show their bill, I.D. number, the initials, and how many hours of service each person gets. She can actually go back to their records and check that out. She has not done that yet, but she can if she needs to. Mr. Rosemier asked her if she periodically crosschecks a few of these bills? Ms. Olson said she hasn’t been actually checking stuff, but that she tells them that they do need the document available so that she could check it though. Mr. Rosemier asked if most of the billings are for hourly services? VAC billings are for meals and rides though, said Ms. Olson. Mr. Rosemier asked if she could get some type of verification that they could provide her with showing the "x" amount and how many hours served, could you do that? Ms. Olson said that she could do that.

Ms. Olson then passed out a new cover sheet for the application and would like to know if this would be any clearer for the committee members? (See sheet attached to these minutes.) Ms. Leifheit suggested a slot for the number of persons served. Ms. LaVigne suggested slots showing money received last year and money requested for this year. The committee suggested just leaving those slots blank and have the agencies fill out those spaces.

On page 4 of the original application, the committee agreed to add another sentence and name it with letter "F" – "Briefly describe why this money should be used to purchase your service? The letter "G" on the same page will not be for the "funding request" paragraph.

Ms. Olson said that she would like to mail the application to the agencies at the end of December/beginning of January 2004 because the agencies need to

return them to her by the end of February. She said that if the committee had any other concerns or thoughts to get them back to her at the December committee meeting.

The committee also discussed whether or not the agencies would be given 15 minutes for both a presentation and questions and answers. Chairman Allen asked the committee if the agencies should just be present for the questions? Another question asked, "Do we need a moderator?" The committee agreed to have Ms. Olson be the moderator for the meeting and to give a brief synopsis of each agency. She would then open it up to questions for each individual agency. Mr. Rosemier said that when Ms. Olson mails out her letter to each agency with the application to have her reflect the changes in it and how the meeting will be run.

Chairman Allen asked the committee if they want the agency-wide budget or not? The majority of the committee, via a show of hands, wanted the full agency-wide budget included. She also said that if anyone had any other changes or concerns to bring them to the December committee meeting and they would be addressed then.

Mr. Jerry Lane, Director of the DeKalb County Community Mental Health Department, reviewed his report for the committee. His board is a none-member board appointed by the county board chairman. No more than one member of his board must be a county board member. They are an entity of the county government but not a department. The County Board sets their levy rate.

Where the Mental Health system is in big trouble in the State of Illinois and nation-wide. People with mental health needs are not being served the way that they should be. The simplest way to illustrate this is to talk about the number of mentally ill people in the jails and prisons. Essentially we are back to where we were in the mid-1800’s. When mental health was reformed in the 1800’s people were mostly kept in the jails and prisons. Reform was to create state hospitals and treat these people as is they had medical problem, which as it turned out was true. Because the system was abused a few decades back we had people come in and try to reform the system as civil rights violations.

We have seen subsequently is an effort to downsize large state hospitals and move people into community treatment programs. In the 1960’s under the Kennedy Administration, there was the community mental health movement.

What we have is a system that works if it’s adequately funded and there’s some cohesive coordinated effort. Illinois is one of the worst states when it comes to that kind of situation. They are badly under funded across the board. We are at the bottom quarter of the states when it comes to funding mental health care.

This past year, they thought that there might be a bright ray of hope since the current Governor did give community based agencies a 4% cost of living adjustment. This is the first time in over a decade that they’ve gotten a cost of living adjustment anywhere near the actual cost of the inflation rate. Unfortunately he held back 2% in case the state budget didn’t work out, which it hasn’t. They are looking at not getting the 2% and there are rumors are continuing to tank that they will even cut what we did get.

The bright ray of hope in Illinois is the local community mental health boards. They were formed under the Community Mental Health Act to provide a local perspective on mental health care. To look at needs that exist in local communities that a global state perspective didn’t deal with. It was thought in the State as an innovative tool. Unfortunately, because of the very poor state funding over the years more and more mental health boards have ended up like the little Dutch boy plugging holes in the state-funding dike. Today were are out of fingers and toes and the dike is still leaking like a sieve. But, what they have been able to accomplish in DeKalb County given the State environment is remarkable. One of the challenges that they have is that they allocate monies to agencies from July to June and the County’s fiscal year is from December to November, which makes for some confusion. It is the first time since he has been the Executive Director of the Community Mental Health Department that they have run a deficit budget and they did it on purpose. They have been putting money away for a rainy day and now it has arrived. They have run into a situation in the last two years where costs for doing business have escalated dramatically. Their ability to remain competitive salary-wise has always been a challenge.

What they have done in the last couple of fiscal years is to pump extra money in on a one-time basis to get over the hurdle and give the agencies some breathing room. Hopefully, they were able to give some time to either raise some more funding or readjust their programming – whatever it takes to survive. This past fiscal year they allocated $200,000.00 in supplemental funding to try to get the agencies through their situations. He hopes to see things turn around. They have burned through the contingency funds and next year they are expecting the same from the State for funding.

He mention some of their accomplishments made over the last complete grant year. Mr. Lane said that their first priority is to sustain existing funding. Staying at the same dollars this year will have inflation eat it up. They were able to fund 35 programs through 11 organizations. They did a 4½% cost of business adjustment in July of 2003. They have a nutrition program that piggybacked with federal grant at VAC that provides help for seniors. The federal government cut the program out and VAC asked for help. The Community Mental Board took monies out of their reserves and helped fund that program.

Mr. Lane also told the committee that they were able to bring a child psychologist to DeKalb County at the Ben Gordon Center. Their funding made it possible to fund her position.

Their state association is working on is an effort to get the state to change its rules to allow local money to be used as Medicaid match. This is a big deal.

They are hoping that at the end of the year they will have the specific rules worked out and how it is going to work.

They have a consortium called the Joint Training Consortium where various organizations have pooled their training services to offer to people that is affordable. They have had a couple of training sessions held at Kishwaukee College that have been successful. They are in the middle of Command Spanish that is a basic Spanish for service providers so that they can communicate with clients. They are also working with libraries to serve as depositories for materials on mental health.

The committee thanked Mr. Lane for his very informative annual report.

The committee agreed that they were happy with the content of their minutes and praised Ms. Supple on her minute taking ability. Ms. Supple emphasized to the members that if they want to make sure that a comment of theirs is included in the minutes to state that at the meeting. If any of their comments are not recorded with the intent that they said, again, Ms. Supple said, they only have to call her and mention it to her what they did mean. Mr. Rosemier said that if there is any contentious discussion, he just wants to make sure that his comments are properly stated in the minutes. Mr. Rosemier said that he felt that Ms. Supple does a good balance with the minutes.

Moved by Mr. Johnson, seconded by Ms. Fullerton, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

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Marlene Allen, Chairman