Commissioners sign on to join Stepping Up Initative

Highland County commissioners Brad Roades, Terry Britton and David Daniels agreed to move toward joining an initiative to better assist individuals with mental illnesses within the criminal justice system during their Wednesday, April 30 meeting.

Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve a resolution signing on to the “Call to Action and Stepping Up to Reduce the Number of People with Mental Illnesses in Jails” as part of the Stepping Up Initiative, following an appointment with Hillsboro Municipal Court Judge Chad Randolph and Highland County Probation Department Director of Programming and Clinical Services Tonya Sturgill.

Stepping Up is a national organization with participating counties in nearly every state, including 58 of Ohio’s 88 counties thus far, according to https://stepuptogether.org. Sturgill said that commissioners’ passage of the resolution is the first step in Highland County joining the initiative, which “supports local jurisdictions in establishing and reaching measurable goals that demonstrate reduced prevalence of serious mental illness across the justice system.”

According to a handout provided by Sturgill, “The mission of both the national and Ohio’s Stepping Up Initiative is to help criminal offenders with mental illnesses get connected to clinical treatment and other services so they can get well, make positive life changes and stay out of jail.”

Judge Randolph said that Sturgill has met with retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, who serves as project director for the Stepping Up Initiative in Ohio, in preparing to implement the program locally.

“It's just a way for counties not to have to reinvent the wheel,” Sturgill told commissioners. “Obviously, we're all dealing with a lot of mental illness in the criminal justice system. Randy [Sanders, Highland County Sheriff] has them in the jail every day, and we're all looking at each other saying, ‘What can we do?’

“Jail is not the best place for them, but our facilities that I work with are also not usually equipped to handle them. They are geared more toward substance use, which we do a great job getting into treatment, but we still have this category of people who are not abusing drugs, but they do have serious mental illness. If we join this initiative, what this offers our county is the support and the resources available in other areas.”

Judge Randolph added that locally, he and others had been “reinventing the wheel because we didn’t know the wheel was already out there. That’s what Stepping Up is.”

“Judge Randolph has already put together a team that was doing this in our community on a smaller scale,” Sturgill said. “This will welcome in those outside resources, help us tap into some things we might not even be familiar with in our county and the surrounding counties, so that we can get these individuals the help that we need.

“The starting process is just you guys passing a resolution saying that the county supports it, and then their foundation will reach out to us, organize a meeting in the county so that we can start putting our heads together and coming up with ways that we can help.”

According to the information provided by Sturgill, upon passing the resolution, the county will receive a toolkit that includes “planning guides, webinars, educational handouts, publications and more.” As Sturgill mentioned, Stepping Up Ohio will schedule a meeting with the local stakeholders to help provide further information.

“As a Stepping Up Ohio participant, you also get access to a variety of technical resources, such as learning opportunities, peer exchanges and a newsletter containing important grant and training information and conferences of interest,” the handout says.

Daniels asked about funding for the initiative.

“There actually is not funds tied to this currently,” Sturgill said. “Just joining their initiative does not guarantee us any funding, but it can turn into that in the long run. Right now, they're just kind of offering support to those staffing cases.

“Just all coming together for sharing that information is all that we're doing today. Hopefully down the road, it does open the door to some funding.”

Britton referred to the handout from Sturgill, which says that “30 percent or more of [Ohio’s] incarcerated population [has] mental illnesses,” with an estimated “2 million people with serious mental illnesses admitted to U.S. jails every year.

“With over 30 percent of population that we’re missing there, that's something needs to be looked at,” Britton said. “We appreciate you taking the initiative to do this.”

In other discussion:

• Highland County Community Action (HCCAO) housing director Jeanette Mottie conducted the first of two public hearings on the Community Housing Impact and Preservation (CHIP) Program.

The county applies for the grant every two years as a partnership among the county, HCCAO and City of Hillsboro. As mentioned by Mottie at a meeting earlier in April, HCCAO was not awarded the grant with their 2024 application due to “a lot of errors,” and commissioners authorized Mottie to resubmit the grant.

Of their 2022 grant, Mottie said they “spent all but $43.”

According to the Ohio Department of Development, “The Community Housing Impact and Preservation (CHIP) Program provides funding to Ohio’s non-entitlement communities to improve and provide affordable housing for low- and moderate-income citizens. CHIP funds are distributed in one competitive funding round per year. Eligible applicants can only submit one application per round.

“Through the CHIP Program, eligible communities can undertake a variety of housing-related activities. Through a flexible, community-wide approach, communities improve and provide affordable housing for low- and moderate-income persons, and strengthen neighborhoods through community collaboration.”

Mottie said that “CHIP funds can be used for critical home repairs, such as roofing, electrical, plumbing, heating and accessibility, full home rehabilitation and down payment assistance for eligible homebuyers.

“Safe, decent affordable housing, strengthens families neighborhoods and our entire community,” Mottie said. “We want your input. Tell us about housing needs in your neighborhood, barriers to safe housing or ideas to strengthen our applications.”

Individuals wishing to submit comments can do so at jmottie@hccao.org or by calling (937) 393-3458.

After the hearing, commissioners voted 3-0 via resolution to authorize the submission of the PY 2025 Community Housing Impact and Preservation (CHIP) Program Grant Application and Implementation plan to the Ohio Department of Development, Office of Community Development; and a contract with Highland County Community Action Organization for the application, implementation and operation of the PY 2025 Community Housing Impact and Preservation Program.

• Highland County Airport Authority president Bob Prosek met with commissioners to discuss a request for renewing the airport’s Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS).

Prosek told commissioners that the AWOS is used by pilots, and news stations use the system for weather forecasts. Prosek added that the public can access the AWOS by calling (937) 393-9038 or by visiting https://khoc.awosnet.com.

“It's very critical to to the pilots, because it also puts what they call NOTAMs, and that's notice to airmen,” Prosek said. “If there's an accident, if there's severe weather somewhere in this area, if there's a bad forest fire or something going on, or the lights are out on the runway, or there's some construction going on in a certain area, we put a NOTAM out, and that way aircraft can get notified of that.”

The airport used grant funding to replace the system in 2022, and Prosek said it “has to be recertified with the Federal Communications Commission” and “certified with the Federal Aviation Administration” periodically.

“We didn't know when the update of the maintenance contract would be,” Prosek said. “It is due this year that it ran out, and it's basically $5,304.50, and that takes care of most of the repairs.

“We usually put this in for our request on our budget each year, but we didn't know what it would be costing for this year, so we didn't want to put an arbitrary number on there.”

Prosek added that the airport “could probably come up with half of that” $5,304.50, “and that would pay for half a year.” Commission clerk Ashleigh Willey said that the contract is “already past due.”

Britton emphasized that it is “important” for the airport to include the cost, or an estimate, for the maintenance in their budget for 2026.

“Everything goes up a little bit, so it's OK to kind of say, ‘look, we're going to plan on this going up 10 percent or some percent,’ but just include it in,” Daniels added. “This is a relatively small amount of money, but over the course of the last four or five months, we have approved relatively small amounts of money, of things that people came in and said, ‘We need this.’

“All of a sudden, we're talking about sort of like the ‘$100,000 here and $100,000 there and pretty soon, you're talking about real money.’”

Prosek said the airport would budget for it next year and that they were “blindsided on this.”

Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the airport authority’s request.

• Britton again encouraged the community to vote for Issue 2 on the May 6 primary ballot, as discussed at several previous meetings and in a resolution of endorsement.

“It helps in all our public works projects,” Britton said. “This is the 10-year renewal for this, and as we had stated before, we are all three in favor of this issue. It's important for the county.”    

• Commissioners approved a recommendation from Highland County Sheriff Randy Sanders to discontinue a $3,385 three-year service contract with Vertiv to “maintain the battery backup system at the jail” that was due for renewal.

“The best I can tell we’ve been paying this money for at least the last six years, and we've never met anybody from the company,” Sanders said. “They've never been down to do anything. They don't do a maintenance service. They just come if something’s wrong.”

• Commissioners received a copy of an April 25 application to the Ohio Power Siting Board, as New Market Solar 1 and New Market Solar 2 developers are seeking to build an operations and maintenance (O&M) building in Whiteoak Township.

“The Power Siting Board will determine whether or not they can do that,” Daniels said. “Their responsibility is to inform us that that's going to happen. I think that all of us would like to make sure that the facilities that they are putting in there are being maintained and properly operated, so I have no objections to the amendment to the Power Siting Board application.”

Commissioners voted 3-0 to submit no objection to the application.

• After discussing April 23 whether to replace a “problematic” damper at the Sheriff’s Office at a cost of $31,000 or to “swap at all of them” at a cost of $111,000, as described by ARPA funding coordinator Nicole Oberrecht, commissioners voted 3-0
 
Oberrecht presented a change order Wednesday, which she said “brings the total project up to $491,924.34, of which there was grant money through the energy efficiency program of $247,599.” However, Daniels said they were “talking about a difference of $111,000” from the previous contract, and he made the motion for approval.

• A motion by Daniels to permit local organizers to place a sign on the courthouse lawn announcing the “future home of the Revolutionary War Memorial” during the periods of Memorial Day to the Fourth of July in 2025 and 2026 was passed.
 
The project is a joint effort of the Sons of the American Revolution Highlanders Chapter and Daughters of the American Revolution Waw-wil-a-way Chapter. As previously reported, the original idea for the project was approved by Highland County commissioners in July 2019 after SAR and Daughters of the American Revolution representatives brought the proposal to a commission meeting.

“I think that it's appropriate that we put it up, make reference to it, let everybody know that memorial is coming, but rather than leaving it up all year, just put it up at those times,” Daniels said. “I think that they can put it up again next year, before Memorial Day, once again, to call attention to the memorial that they have planned.”

• Commissioners said they received a list of issues to be addressed at various county buildings, which was submitted by Tom Perrin of the county’s maintenance department, as he conducted building inspections recently.

“We’ll make note and start putting them on a punch list to be taken care of, what's not already started,” Roades said.

• At the start of the meeting, Roades pointed out that all three commissioners were wearing jeans for Denim Day in support of sexual assault survivors at the request of the Alternatives to Violence Center.

Also approved Wednesday were:

• A request from Probation for a budget modification within the 2615 CCA 2.0 FY24-25 Fund in the amount of $1,924.

• A request from Probation for an additional appropriation from unappropriated funds within the 2615 CCA 2.0 FY24-25 Fund in the amount of $5,654.97.

• A request from Probation to remove Gary Breeden and add Jon Parr as the backup user for the department’s credit card. (Sturgill is the primary person on the card.)

• A second payment application from Mechanical Construction for the second phase of Rocky Fork Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrades.

• A motion by Daniels to offer no objections to an application for a liquor license at the new Dollar General in Paint Township.

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