Mental health levy to appear on November Butler County ballots

Butler County mental health board leaders are warning critical programs and services may have to be cut or reduced if voters reject a half-mill, $6.6 million levy request in November.

Butler County Commission agreed to ask voters to approve a new mental health levy that would cost taxpayers about $18 per $100,000 in value annually and collect $6.6 million, according to the county auditor’s office.

The Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services Board operates on federal, local and state funding but 57% of its revenue comes from two local tax levies.

MHARS Executive Director Scott Rasmus said this is a new levy, but it will replace the existing .5-mill, 10-year levy that first passed in 1985 and was last renewed in 2014. If successful they will retire the old funding source that expires this year. That levy costs taxpayers $5 per $100,000 and collects about $2.4 million.

“What we’re looking at really here is the delta, the new mills versus the old mills, which is $13 per $100,000 home per year,” Rasmus told WCPO's partners at the Journal-News. “That’s about a dollar per month so what I can say is we’re only going for what we need. We want to utilize this to get out at least five years… We’re very good stewards of the taxpayers' money.”

He said they have gone 39 years on the levy which is “flat funded,” meaning the amount received doesn’t increase, “when you have a 1985 half-mill levy it’s worth about a third of that now, you lose revenue over time.”

The other local tax collection is a 1-mill levy that first passed in 2006 and renewed in 2020. It costs about $20 per $100,000 annually and collects $8.3 million.

The half-mill levy expires this year and the 1-mill funding source ends next year. He said the plan is to pass the new levy this year and go for a renewal on the other in November 2026.

The MHARS Board doesn’t provide direct mental health and addiction services, they facilitate and pay for programs and services their partner agencies provide. According to the board’s 2025 tax budget submission, in 2022 they served about 37,400 “unique” clients which is about 10% of the county’s population.

The board has 14 full-time staffers and Rasmus said the estimated expense budget for next year is $20.7 million.

What is needed

Rasmus told the commissioners recently that there is a need to preserve existing programming and expand services, especially in light of the fact suicide deaths have “been on the rise and elevated for the past two-and-a-half years,” when the average for years was around 42.

He said overdose deaths are also concerning. The county coroner’s office provided this newspaper statistics showing overdose deaths were at a low of 159 in 2019, spiked to 177 in 2020, dropped to 172 in 2021 and increased to 184 in 2022. The number went down to 130 last year and stands at 63 to-date.

Deaths by suicide stood at 47 in 2019, dropped to 38 in 2020, increased to 50 in 2021, 64 in 2022 and 57 last year. The number of known or suspected deaths stands at 34 to-date.

He told the Journal-News young people, the elderly and veterans are especially vulnerable these days.

“I watch to see since COVID, because that was traumatic for folks from children all the way up through seniors,” Rasmus said. “I could see the expanded need and the trauma and the anxiety and the depression and substance abuse and stress that that’s caused. Even post COVID, there’s need for expanded programs.”

Rasmus has been trying for years to expand services to include an emergency mental health crisis stabilization unit. The commissioners were going to allow the board to use the former county Care Facility and also allocated $3 million in federal pandemic relief funds for capital needs for the project.

Last year Rasmus estimated they would need a new $7 million levy to operate the facility. A couple of the commissioners weren’t keen on the high cost and the community reaction was generally negative.

Officials in other jurisdictions, primarily Hamilton objected to bringing the facility here, because they feared it would exacerbate the homeless problem.

Commissioner Cindy Carpenter toured similar facilities in other locations with Rasmus when the board was still in the due diligence phase of the project.

“Dr. Rasmus did countywide public forums because the cities all rebelled against it,” she said. “Instead of just fighting the cities he went out and did what the cities asked and did the forums and it’s just the NIMBY thing, not in my backyard.”

The MHARS board sent out a request for proposals and only received one submission, “that bid had some challenges with it,” Rasmus said.

He told the Journal-News his board was prepared to pay a maximum of $4 million for the first three years of operation, but expected the provider to assume expenses thereafter.

“The provider came in with a budget that was above and beyond that and requested the board cover more than was outlined in the RFP by $1.4 million,” Rasmus said. “That was a problem and there was still a challenge on where this would be located.”

The provider presented a three-year budget of $7.1 million, $7.3 million and $7.5 million and wanted the board to chip in nearly $500,000 per year.

He said the RFP also required the successful provider prove there was community support — from neighboring Fairfield Twp. and Hamilton — for the project, “it was required there would be indicated support from those jurisdictions with it and that did not happen in that proposal, clearly.” He said the project is now on hold indefinitely.

Commissioner Don Dixon told the Journal-News they are exploring other uses for the old county nursing home.

Rasmus told the commissioners his board requires maintaining a nine-month reserve — roughly $14.8 million — and that policy would be jeopardized by a levy failure or delay. The board’s expenses total about $16 million a month and the cash balance at the end of June was $22 million.

“We are approaching the board’s minimum funding reserve level if we weren’t to get this money in about a year from this November we would reach our minimum reserve level,” Rasmus said. “Which could trigger cuts potentially across the board in order to shore up the viability of the board.”

Other tax requests on ballots

The board will have some competition for taxpayer dollars in some communities this fall. Mike Stein, real estate director for the county auditor’s office, said he has done levy certifications for five other jurisdictions, they are: the Lane Library (.75-mill renewal); MidPointe Library (1.25-mill additional); Monroe Schools (3.49-mill bond levy); Oxford (2.60-mill additional) and Ross Twp. (2.75-mill renewal).

The Board of Elections hasn’t certified the Monroe Schools and library levy requests to the November ballot yet.

Mat Himm, past president of the mental health board, told the commissioners he and his family needed the board’s services desperately years ago when he was a heroin addict. He has been clean and sober for nearly 11 years and his wife nine-and-a-half years.

“It is actually very scary to us as consumers to realize that if we do not get new funding and replace what we have, those levies that we currently have will expire,” Himm said. “Therefore, we will have to start cutting funding to programs and unfortunately one of the first things that would have to be cut would be probably stuff like prevention services in schools.”

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