Health Panel Seeks Grant, Draws Rebuke

The 21-member Ventura County Mental Health Board is expected today to ask the Board of Supervisors for a $50,400 annual grant for research, outreach and administration, a request that Supervisor Frank Schillo says is “on the wrong track.”

The request comes a week after Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand said he must cut 27 full-time positions that provide mental health and substance abuse treatment. The cuts represent about half of the $3.7 million in reductions demanded by county administrator Harry Hufford.

Schillo criticized the advisory board, which currently has no budget of its own, for asking supervisors for money that Behavioral Health Department Director David Gudeman chose not to include in his budget proposal.

“They’re certainly on the wrong track,” Schillo said, adding that the mental health department isn’t paying much attention to its problems. “They should be leading the charge to find more money to provide services.”

Supervisors are expected to receive and file the advisory board’s proposal, which is included in a $5.6-million request for services and housing for the mentally ill.

Money from the tobacco settlement and Proposition 172 could help pay salaries for seven new psychiatrists, $3 million in new housing for the mentally ill and provide better mental health training for county law enforcement officers, advisory board Chair Neal Andrews said.

Andrews has called the $50,400 “a modest amount to effectively carry out [the advisory board’s] mandates.”

Lou Matthews, board member of the Ventura chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said she disapproved of the request.

“We don’t need to create another bureaucracy,” Matthews said.