At a subcommittee meeting to discuss the city’s use of $15 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds Tuesday, several City Councillors advocated to make mental and behavioral services a priority. The meeting was the second of two where councillors could give feedback on the use of the ARPA funds to the city’s ARPA Advisory Committee. On Wednesday night, the advisory committee was expected to make recommendations on the priorities for the use of the money across six different categories. The 20-member advisory committee has identified six categories for potential funding, and within each category, preliminarily ranked eight to 10 strategies to address those categories.
“It is expected that in these categories, no more than two or three priorities will emerge for funding opportunities,” said City Manager Thomas Ambrosino. Ambrosino and the city administration will then decide how best to use the money for the priorities, either by putting them out to bid for outside services, or tackling the priorities in-house. During Wednesday night’s advisory committee meeting, which happened after the Chelsea Record went to press, it was expected that the committee would identify the strategies it wants to fund, as well as set aside the amount of money to be spent in each of the six identified categories.
At the committee’s final meeting, Ambrosino said it would then break down the spending for each identified priority. The categories identified for funding include small business assistance, workforce development, affordable housing, food security, mental and behavioral health, and environmental health. “I think (mental and behavioral health) is one of the more important ones in my opinion, because it is the one the is most underutilized,” said District 1 Councillor Todd Taylor. Taylor is one of two councillors who serves on the ARPA advisory committee, along with Council President Roy Avellaneda. “It’s not just Chelsea, I don’t think this country at any level has put enough money into this category,” said Taylor.
The top priorities identified by the advisory committee in the mental and behavioral health category include support for youth development programs, increasing mental health services across the city, supporting rapid crisis intervention teams, expanding services for those experiencing domestic violence, launching a campaign to address mental health stigma, providing mental health supports for immigrants and the undocumented, increasing the number of locations available to access mental health services, and providing peer-to-peer support for addiction issues. “This might be a category where we consider more than two or three priorities,” said Taylor.
He added that some of the priorities could be combined, and that something like the campaign to combat mental health stigma might not cost a lot of money. District 2 Councillor Melinda Vega Maldonado said she agreed that mental health services deserve a healthy amount of funding. “We really need to spend some time with this so we can support our community better when it comes to mental health and addiction and substance abuse,” said Vega Maldonado. “It’s the root issue in so many other things that shouldn’t be overlooked.”
Housing and Community Development Director Alexander Train said the city will have to forge new partnerships and build on its existing relationships to effectively deliver mental health services to its residents. “None of this is going to be done by the city alone,” Train said. “We are going to have to rely heavily on our partners and we are going to look to collaborate in deeper ways with many of the organizations in Chelsea like our nonprofits and our healthcare organizations.”