Restructuring of McLean County’s Behavioral Health Coordinating Council (BHCC) is complete, and as McLean County Board Chair Catherine Metsker promised when she suspended meetings in March, the group now has a defined — and codified — structure, with clear objectives.
The County Board unanimously approved an ordinance Thursday night detailing the group’s membership and powers, and Friday afternoon, the BHCC approved its bylaws, formalizing its role as an independent advisory body to the county.
Metsker said during Friday’s meeting that she hopes the group will “function in a more casual approach,” without the stringent guidance about recordings and public awareness it had over the past several years while serving as an ad hoc committee to the County Board.
Director of Behavioral Health Coordination Marita Landreth said the independence was granted in part to “encourage conversations about what is really happening” related to mental and behavioral health in the community.
Both Landreth and Metsker said the idea is still to keep the public informed about what happens, and most meetings will likely still be open, but they won’t be posted to YouTube anymore.
More changes to the BHCC
Under new guidelines, the Coordinating Council will have no more than 21 voting members, and there will be experts from across at least 13 health providers and social service organizations in the area.
This keeps it a similar size and membership to before the restructuring, though new groups including Home Sweet Home Ministries and OSF HealthCare have been given a seat at the table.
Group objectives have changed more drastically. BHCC members will no longer deal with the Mental Health and Public Safety Fund or make direct spending recommendations to the County Board.
Instead, they will focus on policy. Their major task — now outlined in Chapter 12 of McLean County Board code — is to steer the Mental Health Action Plan (MHAP), which is the guiding document first drafted in 2016 to better understand the community’s behavioral health needs.
County Administrator Cassy Taylor told WGLT the BHCC maintains some financial power, as experts can bring forward external grant opportunities and use the collaborative nature of the group to build applications.
Given that the BHCC is not a part of County Board anymore, the judicial branch will reside over meetings. Metsker handed the reins over to Judge Rebecca Foley at Friday’s meeting after the bylaws were approved.
Foley said she doesn’t think the transition will have much of an effect on how the BHCC has historically operated. She called herself “more of a figurehead” since she’ll just be leading meetings and won’t have any added power in the role.
Potential for more change
However, it’s possible more changes will come to the BHCC. Town of Normal council member and BHCC member Kevin McCarthy expressed a desire to get input on the bylaws from the city manager and mayor.
He pointed out that the town was instrumental in getting the ordinance that now helps define BHCC structure approved.
“A rather short suspense of time and the opportunity for our attorneys and the mayor and city manager at all of our council (to look at the ordinance) resulted in some very substantial material changes to the ordinance before it was actually adopted,” he said.
Indeed, before the city and town gave recommendations, the BHCC had been proposed as an advisory council to the County Board, rather than an independent body.
McCarthy wound up voting against approving the bylaws in favor of giving the town time to review. However, he was joined by only one member in that vote.
County Administrator Cassy Taylor said bylaws can and likely will be updated in the future, such as for the members who expressed interest in changing the meeting time included in them.
Taylor added that she thinks approving the bylaws “has created a reinvigoration of the behavioral health efforts here.”
“I saw a lot of smiling faces and a lot of nodding heads today that people were excited that we were making progress on this,” she said, which is a stark contrast to what Metsker said she’d seen when she joined the BHCC.
Getting to work
The majority of BHCC members agreed to pass the bylaws because it means they can now pick this year’s mental health and public safety priorities next week.
Landreth with the County’s Behavioral Health Department said there’s already meetings set up.
“We will be meeting (for) about a day and a half to really dig down to what each individual organization’s vision for their priorities within the Mental Health Action Plan are and then bring that group together and take that information and hone it down to a more specific focus that the whole group can agree on,” she said.
From there, the Mental Health and Public Safety Fund Advisory Council — which is being called FAC — will get to have its first meeting, create its own bylaws and get money in the county budget for the BHCC’s identified focus areas. FAC is named after the fund it’s overseeing, which is made up of sales tax dollars from Bloomington and Normal.
The FAC will consist of five members total, including the BHCC representatives from Bloomington, the county and Normal, and a representative each from the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and the BHCC.
Taylor said the BHCC still needs to vote in its member — which must come from one of the non-governmental organizations in the group — and while she’s not sure when that will happen, everything else should follow quickly after.
Judge Foley said quick action is what “we owe to the citizens who’ve been, you know, contributing towards these funds.”
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