Before Rochester hires a community health coordinator let's do some due diligence

When you go to the polls on Tuesday you can kill two birds with one stone.

Vote in a man or woman of your choice among mayoral and City Council races and tell the candidates at the polls you visit that a community health coordinator is a half-baked idea that's not ready for prime time.

For those of you who didn't witness the last City Council meeting, the proposed community health coordinator "functions within the Welfare Office to connect community members in need to resources and increase overall health outcomes. This position would coordinate with the Police Department to respond and assist on check condition calls and follow up with those involved on these calls that occur after business hours."

The money would come from almost a million dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funds, which is money set aside to help cities and counties recover from the COVID pandemic, although there's nothing here directly related to COVID.

The million dollar price tag would include five years of salary, a vehicle, clothing and administrative support from city personnel.

Here's just a few of the reasons why we don't need this until it is vetted a little more thoroughly.

The major iteration of this type of funding was guided by a Plymouth County (Mass.) Outreach program that covers more than 530,000 residents and 27 police departments that outreaches mainly with those suffering from substance abuse.

The program boasts success with numbers like 575 home visits since 2017. That's about 10 visits a month throughout the entire county. They go on to note that of those contacts some 400 have "accepted help" from their outreach team.

But they don't quantify what "accepting help" means. Does it mean they received a pamphlet about drug addiction? Or about a residential treatment option?

City personnel at a recent meeting told councilors that Plymouth County saw a decrease in overdoses a year after the program began but there's nothing to suggest any causation, just correlation, with those numbers.

The program description of this position says it would be developed "as evidence-based program with the Community Health Coordinator serving as a resource to address the current need for mobile, nonenforcement response for intervention or health services."

But you can't implment an evidence based program, until you have the evidence.

City Manager Blaine Cox said he envisions this as wider than the PCO program addressing issues to include not only drug abuse, but also mental illness and homelessness.

City staff presenting their proposal said if police were responding to a particular city address repeatedly it would trigger the call for a visit by the community health coordinator.

However anyone that reads the police log will note that on any given weekend more than half of the calls for service for "erratic" behavior, unwanted person, suspicious person that end up as arrests are area transients that have no fixed address.

During the Oct. 19 meeting City Councilor Chris Rice said he had grave concerns with the fact that residents of Dover, Somersworth or any other surrounding town or city would be serviced by the new position that would be a drain on Rochester taxpayers. While voicing support for the concept of such a position, he said support at the county or state level made more sense.

The ARPA funding mechanism for the position lies in Section 1 Behavioral Health Care and section 3.14 Social Determinants of Health - Community Health Workers or Benefits Navigators, which has nothing to do with the COVID pandemic, which is what triggered the need for the American Recovery Plan Act.

Rochester had issues with drug addiction, mental health and homelessness long before the coronavirus came to town.

While we recognize that the proposed position might give some relief to Rochester Police, this is not an effective use of Rochester Taxpayer money.

Every City Council and mayoral candidate at the recent Candidate's Night agreed that homelessness is not a Rochester problem; it's a regional, state and yes, national issue.

The same can be said of drug abuse and mental illness. So why are we spending a million dollars on a national issue?

Last spring the City Council sent the Ethics Commission down to Codes and Ordinances for six months. The same board recently sent the tweaking of a trailer ordinance back to legal.

But now the full City Council is going to consider approving a million dollar "shot in the dark" that' s not even COVID related after a 45-minute presentation by city staff?

By the way, eligible uses of ARPA funds include, according to the Government Finance Officers Association:

Revenue replacement for the provision of government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, relative to revenues collected in the most recent fiscal year prior to the emergency,

COVID-19 expenditures or negative economic impacts of COVID-19, including assistance to small businesses, households, and hard-hit industries, and economic recovery,

Premium pay for essential workers,

Investments in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure.

Let's not jump into this just because it's free money. There's no such thing.

Perhaps a Tri-Cities task force can leverage ARPA funding for one coordinator for the three cities. There may be a need for this. But let's do our due diligence.

There's no rush to spend the ARPA money. So why the rush?

To watch the City Council presentation of the position go to the 55-minute mark on the video here.

- HT