Three new transition facilities to serve people with substance abuse and mental health conditions could begin operations in the next year, with further county approval.
With an 8-0 vote during a called meeting Tuesday, April 2, the Blount County CARES (Corrections and Recovery Saves) Committee sent to the county commission for approval plans to convey up to 5 acres of county property in the Bungalow community to the nonprofit McNabb Center, which has obtained state funding to build the facilities. Five members of the committee were absent.
Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell emphasized during the meeting the need for the facilities and differences from an earlier transition center proposal. These facilities would not serve any current inmates, and no local tax funds would be used for the project.
If the facilities ever cease to provide these services, the property would revert to the county.
He also acknowledged that not everyone would be happy with the plan.
“Everybody ought to agree that this is a problem in the community, that this is something that we’re all facing in our families, that this is something that we’ve got to start directing some of our attention to,” the mayor said, “but no one wants it built near their house.”
He said, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re building Amazon or Smith & Wesson or a facility like this, there’s going to be people that feel like it’s going to adversely affect them.”
The 3.5 to 5 acres the county would allot to the transition center campus under this proposal is from about 62 acres the government purchased from the former Russell Farm.
Mitchell said having a transition center was one of the reasons the county bought the property. According to previous reporting in The Daily Times, the county commission approved spending nearly $1.26 million for the land, a road extension and other related costs in 2019.
The long-term plan also includes moving jail and justice center operations to the site. “The time is going to come when the (current) jail and the Justice Center will not meet the demands of this county,” he explained.
Need
“We can’t continue to just say, ‘Well, we need to do something,’ and not do anything,” Mitchell said during this week’s meeting. “There’s just too many of our citizens that are dealing with substance abuse, overdose, mental health issues that need this help.”
“These are people that truly want to be there to get their lives turned around,” he said, also expressing confidence in the McNabb Center’s services and in industry being willing to hire people who take advantage of the opportunities.
Mitchell told the committee members that people are dying every day and going to jail and some “just need some help.”
“We can’t afford not to do this,” he said.
Three programs
The McNabb Center is receiving about $6 million in grants from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services for the first two facilities and from the state Opioid Trust Fund for the third.
A $2.4 million grant is for a 16-bed facility to provide residential substance abuse treatment for people ages 18 and older, likely for 30 to 60 days each.
A $2.1 million grant would go for an 18-bed facility serving men leaving jail who have mental health or mental health and substance abuse conditions. The facility would serve as their home, and they would be expected to be working or attending training.
“It wouldn’t be unusual for them to stay up to a year, nine months to a year,” committee Chairman Jerry Vagnier explained.
The state opioid abatement award of $1.55 million is for four homes to serve up to 30 people in recovery after being incarcerated, and they would typically stay at least six months.
All would be staffed all day, every day.
The McNabb Center would have contracts to cover operating expenses.
The center’s director of Blount County services, Shannon Dow, told the committee that the nonprofit has had “really good success rates” with similar programs in other counties and here.
In an interview with The Daily Times following the meeting, Dow said McNabb currently has 18 beds available for these types of services in Blount County.
Eight are part of a “jail to work” facility that opened last May, and from there people may advance to a residential recovery home that has 10 beds. Of 20 people who have started the program so far, Dow said, one has left before completing the program.
As the meeting was ending the mayor thanked the committee members and the McNabb Center for their work on the plan.
Blount County Commissioner John Giles, who also serves on the committee, thanked Vagnier for his leadership and passion for the project.
“My youngest brother is no longer with us. We lost him about 12 years ago to this exact issue,” Giles said. “I just wish this had been available; he probably would be with us today.”
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