It was a noble idea, to bring Monterey County residents locked away in mental health facilities located in other counties closer to home and families, but a residential mental health facility planned near Natividad Medical Center in Salinas is no more for now. The Monterey County Board of Supervisors said they couldn\u2019t justify the cost.<\/p>\n
The county had already spent nearly $3.7 million on planning for the 96-bed Mental Health Rehabilitation Center. On Tuesday, Jan. 6, the supervisors were faced with a decision of whether to push forward and build part or all of the project, or cease work altogether.<\/p>\n
New estimates put total costs over 30 years in the range of $140 million for only one of six buildings up to $276 million for the full project. In all three scenarios presented\u00a0\u2013 one, three or six buildings\u00a0\u2013 the county would face annual expenses of between $9.7 million and $11.3 million. Initially, staff estimates showed that the county would make up to $200,000 annually in reimbursements for providing care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the county has that kind of money,\u201d Supervisor Glenn Church said. \u201cThere\u2019s an old saying, fish or cut bait. It\u2019s time to cut bait.\u201d<\/p>\n
The board voted 5-0 to cease all work on the MHRC.<\/p>\n
Currently just over 100 Monterey County residents are being treated in locked facilities in other counties around the state, according to Health Department staff. Of those, about half would be eligible for care at the MHRC; the rest would need a higher level of care elsewhere. Church called it a luxury to house a few dozen people.<\/p>\n
Citing the \u201cunprecedented times we\u2019re living in,\u201d Supervisor Chris Lopez said there were forces at play outside of the county\u2019s control, including interest rates\u00a0\u2013 the county would have to borrow money for construction\u00a0\u2013 and uncertainty of funding at the state and federal levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe project that was initially conceived\u2026 was a lot lower cost. The challenges that we\u2019re facing as a country are what we\u2019re staring at in these sheets,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Wendy Root Askew, who took over as chair of the board for 2026 earlier in the meeting, said the need for mental health beds in the county is real \u201cand we need to find a way to make this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a nod to the residential neighbors who staunchly protested the project, she said she would welcome such a facility in her own neighborhood. In the end, she said she couldn\u2019t make sense of the numbers, but pledged to work on finding a future solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a noble idea, to bring Monterey County residents locked away in mental health facilities located in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[123631,14411,46121,103,61,60,410,411,123630,5081],"class_list":{"0":"post-245511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-canceled","9":"tag-costs","10":"tag-facility","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-mentalhealth","16":"tag-monterey-county","17":"tag-seo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}