photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Douglas County Commission meets for their first day of 2025 budget deliberations on Friday, July 12, 2024.

As Douglas County leaders begin fine-tuning their 2025 budget, they’re asking whether some things can be funded with a mental health sales tax instead of property taxes — and whether it’s really the county’s job to help its partner agencies keep up with rising costs.

The quarter-cent behavioral health sales tax was a theme county commissioners discussed on Friday, the first day of their budget deliberations, and one they plan to spend several days focusing on. Commissioner Shannon Reid said the majority of the one-time budget requests that the commission heard this year could be eligible for the behavioral health sales tax funds, meaning the county could fund some more of its priorities without needing to raise the property tax rate.

“I’m eager to look back at that list of those specific projects and really talk about where we can shift the responsibility of those costs,” Reid said.

As the Journal-World has reported, the original budget proposal from County Administrator Sarah Plinsky calls for no increase in the property tax rate, but that could change depending on which requests from outside agencies commissioners decide to fund.

One funding request that commissioners mentioned as a candidate for mental health funds was from DCCCA, which requested $172,497 in funding for alcohol and opioid use disorder medication. Commissioner Karen Willey said she supported funding DCCCA’s request as long as the money came from the mental health sales tax or from opioid-related funds.

Another candidate was a request from Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, which is asking for a $219,984 cost of living adjustment, or COLA, to cover increases in its operating expenses. Commissioner Patrick Kelly said it made sense to fund this with the sales tax.

“This is our number one mental health provider in Douglas County, number one in the amount of dollars we spend on it,” Kelly said. “I was having a hard time justifying why we wouldn’t use mental health sales tax towards (some of these requests). I think we need to have a bigger conversation about the dollars that are coming in from mental health sales tax.”

Bert Nash wasn’t the only organization whose request was intended to cover rising costs of operations, as opposed to money for a specific project or proposal. Kelly said that the county had gotten 12 such requests from partner agencies, and that in his entire time on the commission he had never seen that many requests for COLAs.

One organization — the Douglas County Extension Council – has three COLA requests, totaling $29,276. Most of the council’s funding comes from the county and K-State Research and Extension, but it isn’t an even split; Kelly said the county currently provides about 65% of the council’s funding. He wondered how much responsibility the county should really bear for funding it.

“There’s some tension between what their expectations of the county are and then their independence is outside of that,” Kelly said. “I just want to have a more clear understanding. If we are going to fund benefits, if we’re funding COLAs, if we’re funding pay equity issues, what is our relationship with Douglas County Extension?”

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health’s Wellness Wednesdays was another program where the commissioners had questions about who was responsible for what.

The program, which is a regular mobile clinic that serves homeless individuals at the Lawrence Community Shelter, is asking the county for $42,000 to continue its operations. But Willey said the program seemed to fall more under the city of Lawrence’s strategic plan to fight homelessness, and that the specific contribution the county made to Wellness Wednesdays was paying for the mobile clinic vehicle. She said she wanted to see the city take responsibility in funding the portion of the program that directly impacts its needs, and Reid also wanted to reevaluate what the county was responsible for.

“I don’t want to see this program go away,” Reid said. “But I also wonder if it’s a shared cost with the city and if it’s a little bit more of an even split than what is proposed in the budget.”