Conceptual plans for a behavioral health campus on West Second Street between Alabama and Maine streets were shared Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017, with the Douglas County Commission. The plans show a 20,000-square-foot behavioral health crisis intervention center on the left, a transitional home in the center and 10 long-term housing units on the right.

After more than a year of review, the Douglas County Commission will get numbers Wednesday on how much it will cost to build and staff a behavioral health crisis intervention center.

Bob Tryanski, county director of behavioral health projects, is to provide those numbers to commissioners at a 6 p.m. meeting at the Douglas County Courthouse. Those costs are the critical pieces missing as the County Commission looks to craft language for a bond election or elections that would build and staff a crisis center in the Pinckney neighborhood northeast of Lawrence Memorial Hospital and pay for the proposed $44 million expansion of the county jail. Commissioners have said they want to have bond question language crafted and delivered to County Clerk Jamie Shew by the end of the month.

In 2016, the county developed a plan in partnership with Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center for a 40,000-square-foot crisis center estimated to cost $15 million to be built in the 1000 block of West Second Street. However, that plan was scrapped and the planning process was restarted when the county and Bert Nash started working with Lawrence Memorial Hospital, DCCCA, Heartland Community Health Center and the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority about the scope of services needed to make the crisis center effective.

County commissioners learned last month that the crisis center now has been downsized to 20,000 square feet and would be part of a behavioral health campus, which would also include a transitional group home and an eight- to 10-unit apartment complex available for those with behavioral health issues.

Another topic on the meeting agenda is discussion of the half-cent sales tax that the county has the authority to ask voters to approve to fund and staff the crisis center and the proposed jail expansion. County Administrator Craig Weinaug said last week that the county discovered it could ask voters to approve only the full half-cent of additional taxing authority and not the quarter-cent increments as previously thought.