Norfolk weighs absorbing Community Services Board

NORFOLK

The Community Services Board has the stigma of paying the "no-show" worker. Plus, the agency is running budget deficits and depleting its reserve fund.

These all could be the city manager's problems soon.

Today, City Manager Marcus Jones will tell the City Council whether he wants to change the structure of the CSB to make it a city government department, and revise its board so that it would advise, but not make decisions. Jones is to brief the council during its 4:30 p.m. informal work session and will discuss the results of a work group that studied CSB structure, according to a memo he sent the council.

The agency has a projected $1.1 million deficit this year in a $24.3 million budget. And that follows deficits of nearly $1.6 million in fiscal 2011 and more than $1.6 million in fiscal 2010, according to the agency's finance director. The reserve fund dropped from about $9.8 million in February 2010 to a projected $5.8 million at the end of this fiscal year because of deficits and required programs such as electronic health records.

The agency provides mental health and drug abuse services to the vulnerable and poor, and recently announced that one of its programs will close to cut the budget. The Therapeutic Learning Center, a day program on Tidewater Drive for people with mental illnesses, is to shut down Feb. 7. The program is budgeted to earn $378,000 in fees in fiscal 2012 but budgeted costs are $900,000, said Mark Moser, the CSB's chief financial officer.

A loss of city and federal funding is among reasons for the budget troubles. Federal funding dropped from $3.3 million in fiscal 2011 to $2.6 million this year. City funding was cut a million dollars, from $3.8 million in fiscal 2011 to $2.8 million this year.

Fees from Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance have plummeted and are projected to drop $780,000 this year. The agency blames the recession and increasing numbers of people without Medicaid and no insurance whatsoever.

"As long as there's uninsured people as a product of the recession, we're going to continue to see numbers swell," Moser said. "If they don't have insurance, while we've tried to tailor back the benefit, we generally don't turn people away."

Additionally, investment income from money in the reserve fund is down because there's less money in the fund and market rates are low, Moser said.

The CSB was largely out of the public spotlight until August 2010, when news surfaced that the agency had kept an administrative employee on paid suspension for 12 years without explanation.

Virginia law requires local governments to have a CSB, but gives them three options on the structure. Norfolk's City Council chose what's called an "operating" CSB - meaning, the agency is not a city department. Although the council appoints members of the Norfolk CSB's board of trustees, those trustees then hire an executive director and vote on policy decisions.

Either way, the Norfolk city attorney represents the CSB.

If the CSB is brought under the city, the city manager, not the board, would hire the CSB director, who would serve at the will of the manager. Current and future CSB employees would become city employees. CSB contracts would be handled by the city.

The Rev. Kenny Bryant, recently elected chairman of the CSB's board, said members support the City Council and will accept what it wants - but see a benefit to the current status.

"Our concern is with our clients. Those with mental-health, intellectual-disabilities and substance-abuse issues," he said. "We feel as though we as a board are very strong advocates for them. We have no political pressure whatsoever being an independent board, and we feel like we're in a good position to advocate for them."

Kathryn Clark Hall, chief of probation and parole in Norfolk, however, sent Jones a letter telling him the city should take over CSB management.

"The Norfolk Community Services Board has, little by little, changed policies that have excluded those for whom services are most direly needed," she wrote.

In an interview, Hall said that in the past few years, people who needed mental health services were put on waiting lists at the CSB, then taken off waiting lists. "There were no therapists available to provide services," she said.

Patrick Wilson, 757-222-3893, patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com