Cindy Gramke is the executive director and chief executive officer for Clermont County Senior Services. Photo provided.

On the Nov. 3 ballot are three renewal levies for Clermont County service agencies: Children’s Protective Services, the Mental Health and Recovery Board, and Senior Services. The Sun asked representatives with each the following four questions:

1. What specifically is on the November ballot for your respective agency?
2. How much would a homeowner pay for the levy, and to be clear, does it raise a homeowner’s taxes?
3. What services are provided under the levy?
4. What would happen if the renewal levy didn’t pass?
5. The Sun also left them a space if there was anything else they wanted to add.

Here are each of their respective answers in turn.

Clermont Children’s Protective Services

1. A renewal of the Clermont County Children’s Protective Services’ five-year .8-mill levy.

Tina Pocock is the deputy director of Clermont County Children’s Protective Services. Photo provided.

2. It does not increase your taxes. The cost will continue with $24.04 per $100,000 valuation for a homeowner per year. The levy makes up around 45 percent of the Children’s Services funding.

3. Levy funding supports stable and safe placements for children in care. As you know, it is important to keep children in their own community, here in Clermont County. Not only does this cut cost for placement for children (like cutting administrative cost for out of county placements) this also helps keep children in their own communities and helps minimize additional trauma. It allows them to still have normalcy and familiarity with their surroundings, such as school, church, sports teams and clubs.

4. If the levy is not renewed it can have a devastating impact. The lack of levy funds creates a burden on the county budget to provide placements for children. This can impact other local funding for courts, law enforcement, etc.

5. During the current pandemic, Clermont County Children’s Protective Services staff have continued to take the necessary steps to ensure that children are safe. It is our belief that safety and well-being of the children of our community could not be compromised. We knew that we could not assess safety from a virtual platform. That children still needed to see a constant and familiar face during this time. They needed to know that their worker is still working hard to ensure they are safe and that someone is making sure they are protected. Families needed to know that we are still working hard alongside them, and the best way is for people to see us in-person. We took all the necessary steps to ensure that all children, parents and caregivers are protected and provided with the safest interaction possible. Our frontline staff have continued to work hard going out to homes, assessing safety and completing interviews to ensure that the children in Clermont County are safe. We believe that this is the expectation of not only our agency but the community, the children and families we serve. We did not hesitate. We continued to respond and will continue to respond.

For more information, contact Pocock at tina.pocock@jfs.ohio.gov

Clermont Mental Health and Recovery Board

1. A renewal of the Mental Health and Recovery’s Board’s five-year .75-mill levy.

Karen Scherra is the executive director of the Clermont County Mental Health and Recovery Board. Photo provided.

2. The annual cost is $20.91 per $100,000 valuation, or $1.75/month or less than 6 cents per day. This levy does not raise taxes, the amount paid would be the same as it is currently.

3. The levy provides $3.1 million in funds to the Board, which is almost half of our total funding. The levy funds mental health and addiction prevention and treatment services and recovery supports. Specifically, levy-funded services include school-based prevention and treatment services in all nine Clermont County school districts, the 24/7 Crisis Hotline (528-SAVE) and mobile crisis services, Medication Assisted Treatment for those with an opioid addiction, peer support services, treatment services for those with serious mental illness, housing and employment services. The Board cannot provide services directly, but contracts with private non-profit agencies to provide needed services. The primary contract agencies of the Board are Clermont Recovery Center, Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, and Hope Community Center, who collectively serve over 10,000 individuals each year.

4. If the levy does not pass on Nov. 3, the Board would ask the Commissioners to be placed on the ballot again next November, as the funds are critical to maintain our system of care. If the levy were no longer in place, almost half of the services currently being provided would have to be cut. That could mean the elimination of some services and/or limits on the number of people who could be served, leading to county residents in need of mental health or addiction services being told that they could not access those services. Lack of services could lead to additional suicides and overdoses among County residents, a increase in the number of children/adolescents having problems at school, and more individuals in jail since they could not be referred for treatment services to address their mental illness or drug/alcohol issue.

5. The Mental Health and Recovery Levy has been in place since 1981. The Board has been good stewards of taxpayer funds, governed by a 14-member, volunteer Board of Directors, appointed by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Clermont County Board of Commissioners, who take their responsibility very seriously. The priority for funding is direct services to County residents, and a small staff of four work to assure that needed services are provided by the non-profit agencies with which we contract. We greatly appreciate the support of Clermont County voters over the years and hope that their support continues.

For more information, contact Scherra at kscherra@ccmhrb.org.

Clermont Senior Services

1. The levy on the ballot is a RENEWAL only levy. Originally passed in 2001, this levy is a 1.3-mill renewal levy, and the effective rate is 1.11 percent.

Cindy Gramke is the executive director and chief executive officer for Clermont County Senior Services. Photo provided.

2. Again, the levy is a RENEWAL, so it would not raise taxes. Homeowners are paying $34.19 a year on a house having an auditor’s home value of $100,000; $68.37 on a home value of $200,000; and, $102.63 on a home value of $300,000.

3. The levy is critical to providing a broad range of services to seniors residing in Clermont County, allowing them to remain living in their own homes for as long as possible. More than 72 percent of the annual revenue needed to provide those services comes directly from the levy. In addition, up to 24 percent above the 72 percent, is dependent upon levy funding in order for the agency to be eligible to apply for other funding that is only available when local dollars can be used as match. For instance, the Ohio Department of Transportation’s 5310 Specialized Transportation Grant is offered each year. CSS is able to apply for that grant and, in the past, this has allowed us to replace vehicles in our fleet that are high maintenance and high mileage. When approved, CSS pays 20 percent of the cost of the vehicles and ODOT pays the other 80 percent. This grant is dependent upon our ability to use funds that are NOT federal or state dollars. They must be local dollars.The number of seniors we served in 2019 – 6,361
a. 82 percent of all seniors we serve receive multiple services, many up to seven Services:

1. Home Care
a. 1,718 (up from 1,550 in 2017, and 1,715 in 2018) unduplicated individuals served in calendar year 2019; 84,403 hours of service.

2. Transportation
a. Buses traveled over 601,000 miles in 2019. Although only persons residing in Clermont County are eligible to participate, we can take individuals outside of the county for treatments and other medical appointments. We frequently transport veterans to VA Hospital in Cincinnati.

3. Meals-on-Wheels
a. 634 (up from 500 in 2017 and 599 in 2018) unduplicated individuals served in 2019; 81,110 (up from 72.487 in 2017 and 74,784 in 2018) meals delivered in 2019.

4. Home Repair
a. 252 (up from 167 in 2017) unduplicated individuals were provided 2,175 hours of service in 2019.

5. Adult Day Services
a. 160 unduplicated individuals were provided 67,577 hours of service in 2019.

6. Adult Protective Services
a. Investigate reports of elder abuse, neglect and exploitation – this has exploded from 124 cases in 2008 to 505 in 2019. We are well on-track to continue that trend and surpass 2019.
b. To provide a historical perspective, when Clermont County Department of Job and Family Services was conducting the investigations, there were 103 reported referrals in 1999. CSS has been responsible for the investigations since 2000. Most significant is the escalation that began in 2008 in the following pattern:
2008 – 124 referrals
2016 – 257 referrals
2017 – 287 referrals
2018 – 448 referrals for investigation
2019 – 505 referrals for investigation

7. Case Management
a. 3,234 (up from 2,374 in 2017) unduplicated individuals served in 2019; 16,757 (compared to 15,495 in 2018) Hours of Service

8. We leverage levy dollars further through our Volunteer Programs such as:
a. Volunteer Shoppers.
b. Meals-on-Wheels.
c. Volunteer Guardian Program.
d. Home Repair.

In 2019, volunteers provided 28,476 hours of service.

4. We are grateful that voters renewed their trust in Clermont Senior Services by passing the Renewal in 2016 at 76.31 percent. We work hard to maintain that trust by providing the services to those who are most in need of that level of support in order to stay in their own homes, rather than in a nursing home. For persons Medicaid eligible, the home-based services represent a significant savings for taxpayers, well over the levy. There is only one mandated service for seniors in the State of Ohio and that is Adult Protective Services. The services we provide to help a senior remain at home like those mentioned, are not mandatory. Therefore, there is no other funding source, state or federal, that would cover these services. Without a Renewal of this levy, we would not be able to provide these services and would have no choice but to cease services and operation. As much as we work diligently to secure other sources of funding, a business cannot exist if 86 percent of its revenue is removed.

5. Clermont Senior Services continues to be uniquely positioned in providing the broadest range of services available to seniors, from one agency, in the entire state of Ohio. CSS continues to demonstrate that it has developed impressive community endorsement and effective corporate governance in being a leader in the aging services community and in Clermont County through strong fiscal responsibility and management, as well as trending to meet the needs of older adults in our community. The only way that we were in a position to run a Renewal – for the fourth consecutive levy cycle – was because of the significant cost savings we’ve implemented over the past twelve years. We are committed to being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars in Clermont County. Moreover, we continually assess ways in which we can do more with less, but never sacrifice staff performance excellence and the Service with Heart culture this agency has preserved and perpetuated for more than 50 years.

For more information, contact Jennifer Harcourt, communications and development manager for Clermont Senior Services, at jharcourt@clermontseniors.com.