It’s easy to read the Butte County budget at their website –
https://www.buttecounty.net/administration/CountyBudget/FY17-18AdoptedBudget.aspx
You’ll find a neat table of contents to save you a lot of scrolling. On page 99 you’ll find the Behavioral Health Fund. Or click here:
The table shows the revenues and expenditures adopted by the board of supervisors for this past year. It’s not final – we’ll have to wait until the post the “actuals” – what was really spent – in retrospect. But, you can learn alot by looking at the adopted budget.
For example, The Behavioral Health Department’s single biggest source of income is “Intergovernmental Revenues” – $53,560,837. That’s nearly their entire budget. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office at http://www.gao.gov, “intergovernmental revenues” are “monies obtained from other governments and can include grants, shared taxes, and contingent loans and advances.” These monies exchange hands “as reimbursements for performance of general government activities and for specific services for the paying government.”
As Butte County Behavioral Health Director Dorian Kittrell told me, BCBH receives those funds for offering “beds” at various facilities, mostly the psychiatric hospital in Oroville. At that time the amount per patient per day was $550.
I’m no math whiz, but I divided $53,560,837 by $550, and then divided that by 364 days a year. I got 266 patients per year.
Notice the IR figure for fiscal year 2015-16 is about $8 million less than this year’s figure. Meaning, we’re taking in (you do the math) more transfers now than we were taking in 2015-16. Well, look around Chico – just the other day I saw several sprawling transient camps set up within plain sight of various streets around town. Bus stops taken over by chattering idiots waving cigarettes and screaming obscenities at whomever. My husband and I avoid Bidwell Park these days, but as we drove Hwy 32 out of town yesterday we watched a Cal Fire truck and some CHP officers routing an illegal camper who had driven his car into the scene of last month’s “Stoney Fire”. Who knows how long he’d been camping in there – the neighbor told us he’d reported many illegal campers.
I couldn’t find out what the current fee per day per patient is – ask your county supervisor. Ask them how many “patient transfers” BCBH orchestrated this year, and how many of those people are now on the streets of Oroville and Chico.
And watch this news story from Escalon, California.
Stanislaus County, Modesto Officials Accuse Escalon Police of Dumping Homeless Couple
Chico Taxpayers Association 
More a question than a comment, re these excerpts:
The Behavioral Health Department’s single biggest source of income is “Intergovernmental Revenues” – $53,560,837. That’s nearly their entire budget. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office at http://www.gao.gov, “intergovernmental revenues” are “monies obtained from other governments and can include grants, shared taxes, and contingent loans and advances.” These monies exchange hands “as reimbursements for performance of general government activities and for specific services for the paying government.”
BCBH receives those funds for offering “beds” at various facilities,
It doesn’t surprise me that most of their income would come from “Intergovernmental revenues” since I would expect they receive grants (as well as the fees you write about). Are you stating that the whole 53 million is for offering beds to other jurisdictions?
Or are there grants involved too?
And are all the other jurisdictions out of county?
Thanks, I look forward to your reply.
Keith that is an excellent question for your County supervisor. When I spoke to bcbh director Dorian Kittrell, that is the impression I got. You can also contact him via the County website.
I wish more people like you would start asking questions.
Furthermore, I attended a meeting at which Kittrell was imploring members of the public to take these people into their homes and Mentor them. He was telling the rest of the group that BCBH needs more housing for these people, and they’re looking for landlords like me to rent to them. They expect you not only to accept lower rent, but to help these people remember to take their meds and learn how to behave properly.
Anybody who has ever tried to help friends or family addicted to alcohol or drugs, or having mental illness, knows that you need professional help to deal with these situations. The idea that these hundred thousand plus salaried people would tell everyday members of the public, Mom and Pop, to take in people with serious drug, alcohol, and mental issues, not to mention criminal backgrounds, is so ridiculously irresponsible I didn’t even know how to comment back.
The first word that came to my mind was Chiapella.