Common Council Approves $250,000 In ARPA Grants To Mental Health Providers And Community Events Organizations

The Common Council met 03/16/2022. One of the items that they took up was the allocation of $250,000 of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to various organizations that provide mental health services as well as to Appleton Downtown Inc for services to the local economy.

This was discussed during the 03/09/2022 Community and Economic Development Committee during which Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked for a summary of what the organizations would use the funds for, and it was then approved both by the committee on 03/09 and by the Common Council on 03/16.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) started off the discussion by saying that he had voted against the allocation in the fall when Mayor Woodford had first brought those ARPA recommendations forward. “And to me it wasn’t a sound investment in my view then; it’s not now either.” He recognized that the organizations slated to receive the grants individually and collectively provided great service to the community, “but in a lot of cases the groups they serve are narrowly targeted. The impacts they have are also kind of narrowly focused. It’s important work, no doubt about it, but it’s limited in terms of its community-wide impact. And again, I’m not questioning the value of these services they provide, but in my view, these are really once in a lifetime funds that we have an opportunity to use, and they should be used to pay for projects that impact all of our city residents either through debt reduction projects or for projects that offset future borrowing.”

Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked to call the question, but his motion failed for lack of a second.

Alderperson Hartzheim concurred with Alderperson Doran. She preferred for the ARPA funds to go toward something different, but since that ship had sailed, she would vote against the grant allocations.

Alderperson Kristin Alfheim had served on the committee that worked on vetting and approving the grant requests and said, “I completely respect yet my colleagues in making sure that our dollars—our taxpayer dollars—are put where they are going to affect the most people, and I think it is in general what we try to do.” She believed it was important to talk about the numbers a little bit. One of the grant applications had mentioned having a 300 person-long waiting list of children, a majority of whom lived in Appleton, waiting to be seen by a counselor. That was only one grant application.

She went on to say “When we say we believe [these organizations are] doing good but we don’t think it’s doing enough good for the taxpayer, I think we need to be careful.”

300 children were waiting to be seen, and how many countless more were already currently receiving services? If these organizations weren’t capable of taking care of hundreds of Appleton youth, what would happen to those youths as they great older? Would that not come back to the taxpayers at some point. She believed the answer was a very obvious “yes”.

She understood that everyone was trying to be respectful and make sure that they were not being frivolous with taxpayer dollars. She thought staff had done a very good job of picking places where the funds would impact the city. The Council had voted to approve those dollars for the good of the city and she believed they had done that. “I believe that we are helping the city and its youth who become our future leaders, and if we’re not doing it then we’re in trouble in the future.”

Alderperson Wolff stated, “The reason I went so hastily into [asking to call the question] is because this is something that is incredibly important in our community. Doing this is common sense—straightforward. There have been so many people in crisis in the past two years. I’ve had an exceptionally horrific personal two years with the amount of death that I’ve endured. And I’m just looking around at how many people are in crisis, mental health in this community, and investing in that is a no brainer. Investing in your people’s health is an absolute no brainer.”

Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) stated that when she looked at these organizations what she was the results of what Chief Thomas always called the “shadow pandemic”. These things had an effect not just on the people of Appleton but on their public safety. The results fall to the Police and Fire departments to handle. She believed the Council had a responsibility both to the residents of Appleton and to the public safety employees.

Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3)said, “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again ‘people live in communities not on spreadsheets.’ These dollars and the services they’re gonna help provide are going to do vastly, vastly more for this community then $250,000 in debt reduction ever will.”

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6)added to the points made by the other alderpersons by saying, “Mental health is public health, and we didn’t bat an eye about accepting ARPA funds or CARES Act funds to handle the physical health aspects of the pandemic. And as my colleagues have so eloquently said, the shadow pandemic extends further, and this is an extension of public health. The R in ARPA is for “rescue”. And we had an opportunity to try to rescue some people with this, and I think we’ve done an exceptional job with the people on the committee in these allocations, and we have the opportunity to do some real good here. and I find it astonishing that anybody would actually question that.”

There was no further discussion and the Council voted 12-2 to approve the allocation of the funds with Alderpersons Hartzheim and Doran voting against.

[I think the fact that a local health organization has 300-person long waiting list of children seeking mental health services is an absolute indictment of how government leaders responded to the pandemic. All along, the critics of lockdowns and other compelled Covid measures were driven by concern for all of the unintended consequences of those actions, particularly on how children would be impacted, and yet those critics were ruthlessly excoriated and denounced as heartless grandma killers. Yet, I suspect that if their concerns had been taken into account early on—if local schools had stayed open, if children had been allowed to socialize, if they hadn’t been pushed to the margins of society for the last two years, we wouldn’t have a 300-person strong waiting list of mentally troubled kids right now.

I also believe very strongly that mental health requires more than a counselor or medication, and reducing it to services provided by a professional can easily come off as dismissive and demeaning. While some people can benefit from counselling services, there are a lot of people whose mental state has been profoundly impacted by the pandemic response who will not receive benefit from counselling services. The members of the household where both parents were deemed “nonessential” by the government and denied the basic human right to provide for their family, don’t need counselling services to improve their mental health; they need things to return to normal. The person who lost two family members to cancer because hospitals were refusing to treat non-Covid patients doesn’t need counselling; they need things to return to normal. The person who lost two close friends after they relapsed and overdosed due to social isolation doesn’t need counselling services; they need things to return to normal.

People’s mental health improves when things return to normal, when they can rely on institutions to carry out their core functions, when they can gather with friends, when they don’t have to live with the constant dread that the government might take away their right to work or assemble or carry out the normal functions of their lives.

For many people, the city using ARPA funds for something mundane like debt reduction would absolutely improve their mental health, because the government would be showing that it was getting back to normal and focusing on its basic core function of managing the city’s services and finances in a responsible way. It would also improve their mental health by improving their sense of economic well-being which is a big component of mental stability. Right now, we have rampant inflation, we’re on the verge of recession, we’ve got a library project that is already $11+ million overbudget, we’ve got a big school referendum in the fall if passed will jack our taxes up, costs are going up everywhere, and no local leader seems to be stepping up with a plan on how we’re going to weather this financial crisis.

Mental health counselors might be beneficial to some people, but they’re certainly not beneficial to all or even most, and it would be nice if the city started focusing more on the financial well-being of the city and its residents.]

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=917290&GUID=0B782C69-BC42-4B96-8C02-C9B0DF17B8BB