photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Treatment and Recovery Center of Douglas County is pictured on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022.

The leader of Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center told board members Tuesday morning that conversations between Bert Nash and Douglas County regarding the county’s yet-to-open behavioral health crisis center are progressing.

The update from Bert Nash CEO Patrick Schmitz came a week after Behavioral Health Partners, the nonprofit formed to guide the Treatment and Recovery Center of Douglas County, informed the Douglas County Commission that it wished to step away from that responsibility and recommended Bert Nash run the facility instead. A third of the members of that nonprofit’s board are Bert Nash appointees, one of whom is Schmitz.

Schmitz told Bert Nash board members that since last week’s commission meeting he’s had a couple of meetings with Douglas County Administrator Sarah Plinsky about the next steps for opening the TRC, and they’ve been “productive.” He said county staff has likely started reviewing some of the materials submitted to the county last week, which includes items like staffing plans and a budget that Plinsky said last month were obligations that BHP had yet to fulfill.

Schmitz said beyond the delay in that process due to the holidays, he expects he could hear back from the county with some early questions soon after the start of the new year.

“Bert Nash is moving forward with a lot of the work that we need to do in order to be prepared,” Schmitz said. “… A lot of work has gone up to (last) Wednesday, and I’ll tell you while the team is taking a little bit of a step back to breathe, they are not breathing too much. They are really pressing forward with trying to finalize last details, last things, and prepare for the next steps.”

Some of that continued preparation will be related to the TRC’s budget. Schmitz told board members he wasn’t yet prepared for them to approve the document, even though it was listed as an action item on Tuesday’s meeting agenda.

Schmitz said that’s because Bert Nash Chief Operating Officer Stephen O’Neill, who’s taken the lead on the budget, is still working through some of the details. But Schmitz did add later in the meeting that he expects the board to approve the budget by sometime in January at the latest, depending on how soon the county wants it.

“We are continuing to work through this,” O’Neill told the board. “We are continuing to refine it. I am certain that we will catch small spreadsheet errors or things as we work to finalize that. … But I think what I would want you to take away from this (meeting) is there is sufficient revenue to cover the cost of operations of the facility. That is the big takeaway from this.”

During last Wednesday’s presentation to county commissioners, O’Neill detailed the TRC’s expected revenue sources — state Medicaid funding covering anywhere from 56% to 65% of the center’s operating budget, an estimated $3.1 million in state Crisis Intervention Center funding, and the county’s quarter-cent behavioral health sales tax if needed.

O’Neill also clarified that the $1 million in bridge funding from the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services that Schmitz told commissioners Bert Nash had secured last week is in addition to those revenue sources. That points toward the TRC being a “viable financial endeavor,” he said.