On Sept. 23, 2013, a Kitsap County ordinance was adopted to establish the Mental Health, Chemical Dependency and Therapeutic Court Citizens Advisory Committee. A 1/10th of 1 percent increase in county sales tax was approved as the dedicated funding source. Funding would be distributed through a grant process that met the criteria established and outlined through the Request for Proposal (RFP).

Two groups of stakeholders and volunteers were established for the purpose of developing operational goals, creating the RFP, defining how the grant application and funding process would work, strategic planning and the identification of need as well as creating a process to monitor outcomes.

These groups are the Behavioral Health Strategic Planning Team, made up of stakeholders at the elected and executive service provider levels; and the Citizens Advisory Committee, made up of county residents with related professional and individual expertise and/or experiences.

As of January this year, I am one of the members of the Citizens Advisory Committee, or CAC as we like to call it. To comply with the Kitsap County Advisory Handbook that governs my appointment, I must remind everyone that my views and thoughts here are my own and only reflect my experiences and are not necessarily the views or opinions of the CAC. There are 11 positions total. Five positions are specific to certain service organizations, and six are at-large positions. I currently occupy one of the at-large positions.

Members of the CAC are recommended to and appointed by the Kitsap County Board of Commissioners for a term of three years.

HOW IT WORKS

1/10th of 1 percent in sales tax is collected from qualified purchases within Kitsap County. The county Department of Human Services is the overseer and facilitator for this program. This locally collected money then begins a journey through a grant process of submission, grading, and review toward final recommendations based on a majority vote of the CAC.  Recommendations are finalized by a vote of the commissioners.

WHAT IT FUNDS

Not an entitlement program. That message has been received loud and clear from the Kitsap County Commissioners. This is seed money to be used to fill gaps that exists between programs and funding sources already in place, to obtain the outcome-based results so that a program can prove it does indeed work, and leverage that success and those results into additional funding from sources other than the 1/10 of 1 percent.

WHO IT HELPS

The 2016 grant applications and funding awards spanned a diverse number of services and programs. Previously funded programs include crisis-intervention training for 250 law enforcement officers and behavioral health training for 416 school staff members. Screenings for substance-abuse disorders were funded for 13,929 individuals. Substance abuse treatment and re-entry services were provided for 161 individuals released from Kitsap County Jail. The Adult Felony Drug Court has been expanded, adding 50 individuals to a successful program.

WHY IT WORKS SO WELL

The makeup, collaboration and representative efforts of the CAC are the backbone of why county taxpayers are provided an accountable, transparent, established and well-vetted system of exactly how their entrusted tax money is spent. This group is made up of true volunteers who do not receive any compensation or individual professional improvement benefits from the work that they do for the CAC.

Mandatory quarterly reports are part of the contracts that grant recipients must comply with and adhere to. Outcomes and results are monitored by the CAC to ensure that the grant-recipient programs are in compliance with the organizational directive and budgetary narratives and outlines they submitted in their applications. Basically, this ensures the recipients are doing exactly what they said they were going to do with the money and are either obtaining the results that were expected or, if not, then a full and complete explanation as to why this is not the case is submitted with the course correction needed to get back on track.

Money that was awarded to a grant applicant and not spent must obtain an approved continuation or stays in the funding pool and then be re-applied for in the next grant cycle.

WHY KITSAP IS A LEADER

Thanks is great part to the success of the establishment of oversight of this tax-funding stream and the way in which Kitsap County has gone about it, recognition and questions from other public agencies and services within the State of Washington are being received. Kitsap is a model that other 1/10-of-1-percent-sales-tax programs for these specific services are looking to duplicate and/or emulate when it comes to strategic planning and representative individual community member oversight.

I consider it to be a great honor to be a part of this work and serve along with the wonderful people that make up the CAC. After serving on many types of advisory committees for a variety of public agencies over the years, I thank the commissioners for bravely encouraging and fully allowing the process to work as it should without the typical political pressure, influence and maneuvering one comes to expect at this level when this much public money is involved.

This is truly a program where the community of Kitsap does indeed fund solutions for the most vulnerable among us.

For more information, go to www.kitsapgov.com/hs/mhsa/newmhsaboard.htm.

— Contact Colleen Smidt at colleensmidt@gmail.com