Platte County voters to decide fate of sales tax to fund children’s mental health services

Platte County to vote on new sales tax November 5 help fund children’s mental health services.

Supporters of the quarter-cent tax include mental health providers, who say the money is needed to meet Platte County’s growing needs. Tax dollars will support the mental well-being of children under the age of 19.

The measure would create the Platte County Children’s Fund, which would have an annual revenue of $5 million that would be generated by the tax. The foundation will be governed by a nine-person board appointed by the Platte County Commission.

The board will distribute the money to local agencies that apply for the funds.

Why does Platte County need a child tax?

If the tax is approved, the average Platte County resident could expect to pay an additional $20 in sales tax per year.

Campaign sponsors include Synergy Services and Beacon Mental Health. They indicate a 2023 needs to be studied from the Northland Community Foundation, which identified a shortage of mental health providers in Northland. The provider-to-patient ratio is 840 to 1 in Platte County, compared to 430 to 1 statewide.

“We can use these resources not only to provide immediate treatment, but also to provide prevention,” Tom Petrizzo, CEO of Beacon Mental Health, said during an April County Commission meeting. “With these funds, we do a lot of evidence-based prevention programs that help kids who feel so lonely, maybe think about harming themselves. We do it in schools. We do it in the community.”

The funds will act as comparable sales taxes in Jackson and Clay counties. Jackson County voters first passed the tax in 2016 and renewed it in 2022.

Similar sales taxes for mental health programs have drawn criticism.

The Show-Me Institute, an anti-tax think tank, pointed to a similar tax and fund in Lafayette County that was involved in a scandal after the state auditor’s office found that the fund was doling out money using favoritism and raised questions about whether the money was being spent properly.

After Platte County providers failed to convince the three-member county commission to put the sales tax on the ballot in April, they organized and collected signatures on their own.

The group needed about 4,500 signatures to participate in the election. The measure was approved just days before the deadline after confusion in the courts over who was allowed to approve the measure for the November election.

Commissioners have raised concerns about how the money will be used and how effective it will be in addressing the mental health problems children face.

“We cannot hand the responsibility over to the state to take care of the mental health of all our children,” Commissioner Joe Vanover said in April. “Passing this tax would be a big step away from individual and family responsibility and a big step toward collective responsibility.”

This story was originally published in Lighthouse.