McHenry Co. agencies paint grim picture with budget cuts looming
Leaders of McHenry County's Health Department and Mental Health Board Tuesday painted county board members a grim picture of layoffs, program cuts and families desperately in need of help that may never arrive as a result of huge funding cuts expected as Illinois lawmakers continue to be deadlocked on a state budget.
"It is definitely doom and gloom out there," county board member Sandra Salgado said.
Salgado knows first hand. An employee of the Pioneer Center for Human Services, a McHenry-based organization that serves people with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, Salgado said the agency will be sending out layoff notices this week.
The Pioneer Center is expected to lose nearly $1.7 million it was anticipating in next year's budget, part of an overall $6.7 million loss faced by agencies providing behavioral health care services in the county. Others facing major reductions include Family Service and Community Health Center, which expects its funding to drop about $1.9 million, the county's mental health board, at about $700,000, and the Youth Service Bureau, which anticipates a $516,000 decline.
Hardest hit, according to mental health board figures, will be mental health programs, which could lose more than $4.5 million, followed by programs for residents with developmental disabilities, which could see a $1.3 million decline.
"We believe this eliminates the community-based mental health system as we know it," said Sandy Lewis, executive director of the McHenry County Mental Health Board.
With funding so limited, Lewis said, most agencies will have to focus primarily on residents in crisis mode, leaving families with less severe needs without the services they count on. The result, Lewis and law enforcement officials said, could be more homelessness and a more crowded jail and justice system.
"Sooner or later, people are going to end up on the bottom rung, and that usually means they're going to be in jail or in a system that has no way to respond to them," McHenry County Undersheriff Gene Lowery said.
Health Department Administrator Patrick McNulty said his agency, which gets 40 percent of its funding through the state, expects to cut back on programs to help teen mothers, prevent communicable diseases, contain public nuisances and provide immunizations.
County board leaders stopped well short of promising the agencies they would help make up the funding shortfalls, but indicated they would consider whatever assistance their own limited resources could provide.
"We're a strong county that's prided ourselves on our services," County Board Chairman Ken Koehler said. "It's certainly going to be a challenge. We will find a way to work through this, but it's going to be difficult."