City's Mental Health Tax Supports Local Agencies

Did you know that the City of St. Charles levies a special property tax to support local mental health agencies?

Pursuant to the Community Mental Health Act, the City has established a Mental Health Board and a tax levy that authorizes expenditures "...to construct, repair, operate, maintain and regulate community mental health facilities to provide mental health services as defined by the local community mental health board, including services for, persons with a developmental disability or substance use disorder, for residents thereof and/or to contract therefor with any private or public entity which provides such facilities and services ..."

The City's mental health tax levy has been in place since 1986, when voters approved a referendum to establish the tax. The referendum was approved with 53 percent in favor of the initiative. Mayor Fred Norris presided over the first meeting of the Mental Health Board in April 1986.

Although the referendum authorized a tax rate of up to $.15 per $100 of assessed value, the tax is levied at the rate of $.04 per $100 of assessed value. This means that the owner of a $400,000 home pays approximately $50 per year. The tax proceeds started small at just over $100,000 in the first year and have grown with the community.  This year, the amount collected will be approximately $630,000.

The funds collected for mental health services are segregated and kept in a separate account. Each year, the Mental Health Board meets to review funding requests and to allocate funding among the many different applicants. The Mental Health Board has a specific process that they go through each year. All agencies are required to complete a detailed application form. Agencies are asked to describe how funds will be expended and quantify services provided to the community. Organizations must also explain how funds allocated from the previous year were expended and the purpose(s) of those expenditures.

Organizations are also asked to execute an affidavit that requires 2 things:

1. that the funds be spent in service to St. Charles residents, and
2. that no St. Charles resident be denied services, based on inability to pay.

The Mental Health Board meets for many hours to hear presentations from the applicants, consider which organizations will result in the best services and outcomes for the community, and recommend how to allocate the limited amount of funds available.

It is worth mentioning that the fiscal woes of the State of Illinois have resulted in drastic reductions in funding to mental health agencies. This makes the locally collected and administered funding even more important for the agencies to carry out their missions.

This year, the Mental Health Board has recommended that agencies receive $634,000 in funding. Any agency that is slated to receive more than $25,000 in funding must make a presentation to the City Council. This year, eight agencies are receiving more than $25,000 and presentations were made on June 20th and July 19th. Final approval of the funding requests is slated for the August 1st City Council meeting. For a full list of the agencies to receive funding in 2011, please click here.

One of the criteria that Family Circle magazine considered in naming St. Charles the #1 town in the USA for families is its "giving spirit." The community's generosity in providing funds to agencies that serve the less fortunate of St. Charles clearly demonstrates this.