Washtenaw County Commissioners And Staff Place Line Item Budget on County Website In Response To WCSO Budget FOIA Request

The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners [BOC] are poised to place a rubber-stamp renewal of the Mental Health/ Public Safety Millage [2017] on the November 2024 Ballot. If approved in November by voters, the millage would be extended from 2026 thru 2033. I’ve written extensively about this and factors surrounding the renewal, the abundance of objection to renewing the millage as written. Several community members, care providers, mental health services consumers have asked that commissioners separate the mental health portion of the millage for its own measure, unencumbered with financial support for the sheriff [WCSO].

In response to overwhelming pressure to separate the mental health funding from public safety funding currently in one millage, along with a FOIA request yours truly submitted back in March 2024 for the entirety of the WCSO budget line items, contracts, and memoranda of understanding [MOUs]… Commissioners and county staff have finally placed the county budget line item expenditures and revenues on the Open Book county webpage. Click here to go to the Open Book and here to go directly to the line item budget.

After amplifying the need for public access to county line item budget documents during the May 15, 2024 BOC meeting, Commissioner Rabhi [District 8 - Ann Arbor] noted that former commissioner Wes Prater had been asking for the line item budget, in regard to the Parks Millage fund with little success.

After being informed that the line item budget was available on the county Open Book webpage, I took a look via the Wayback Machine at the most recent archived Open Book webpage from March 2024, which shows that the line item budget was not on the page at that time.

Thanks to everyone who donated to the fundraiser for the ~$938 that the county is charging me to obtain line item and related county budget documents. That pressure along with the voices of the community organized by Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice [ICPJ], WeROC, and other allies put the line item document on the county website.

We are still waiting on the contracts and MOUs and don’t expect to have those documents until Friday June 7, 2024… two days after the pending vote on putting the MH/PS Millage on the November 2024 ballot.

After the May 15 BOC meeting, I received an email from Commissioner Scott [District 9 - West Ann Arbor] informing me that she was seeking to have the ~$938 FOIA fee refunded and that she “…feel[s] very strongly about this since you should have never had to FOIA that to begin with.”

If we get those funds back… gofundme does not reimburse donors through the platform once funds are transferred to the recipient. My plan is to donate those $$$ to Care-Based Safety, a local nonprofit focused on creating unarmed crisis response programs and community co-creating a culture and system of care-based safety across the county. You can donate too by going here »»» Care-Based Safety Donation Page

Line Items In County Budget That Need To Be Clarified

I look forward to delivery of the MOUs and contracts for the WCSO so that we can gain clarity on expenditures’ details voters should have before casting a ballot in favor of the rubber-stamp MH/PS millage renewal.

Which line items should be clarified?

Here is a link to the line item budget. Feel free to take a look and comment below if you have questions about something you see in the document that I missed.

There are several entries throughout the line item budget that show allocations for “Gun and Uniform Allowance” which add up to $624,550 for the 2024 adopted budget. We already know that some of the MH/PS millage dollars are going to guns/ rifles.

Is that millage expenditure necessary when already over a half million is going to weapons?

Where are the “Sheriffs Services” being deployed? What are the services being deployed?

Interesting there are no expenses/revenues listed for Metro SWAT…?

Where are these dollars going for jail “Store Commission” etc. Alyshia Dyer, Candidate for Sheriff in the August 2024 Democratic Primary supports “…bringing commissary services in-house, and replacing…private jobs with living-wage, unionized County jobs.” ««« click this link, scroll down and click on the “Reform the Washtenaw County Jail” drop down button.

Who are these consultants, how much does each consultant agency get and what are the terms of the contracts?

“Shop With A Cop”??

Is this Shop With A Cop program no longer funded/ operating? Fundamentally, it is crass for armed police officers to be “shopping” with 200 youth “in need.” Is this taxpayer funded WCSO public relations program really necessary?

Here’s the 24% of the MH/PS millage broken down by how much each municipality with its own police force receives. This is yet another reason we need to separate these millages. We should not be handing over county taxpayer dollars, unrestricted funds mind you, to municipalities that do not need the extra funding, especially Ann Arbor.

What makes up the “Sheriff Technology” being supported here?

I expect to have some answers to these questions once the rest of the WCSO budget is obtained.

What questions do you have about the WCSO budget or the county budget in general?

We should not rubber-stamp renew this millage as currently written. We have other options which include to wait until next year to put on the ballot to allow for a more robust community discussion to envision what/ how mental health services should be provided as well as ways to re-envision public safety, what this can look like without armed police involved. I’ve noted these options before here and here they are again:

We still have alternatives to renewing this millage as it is currently written:

1. Propose a separate millage exclusively for mental health resources and services, none of which will be overseen by the sheriff.
2. Postpone the millage renewal to 2025 or even 2026 so that we can have a more robust discussion of how to proceed in terms of funding mental health resources/ services
3. Propose a renewal of the millage for 2 years instead of 8 years, so that we can have that time to engage with each other about what mental health services funding can look like, how we can re-envision what we mean by “public safety.”

What Do You Think?

Addendum

Current millage language:

“Washtenaw County Community Mental Health and Public Safety Preservation Millage

“Shall the limitation on the amount of taxes which may be imposed on taxable property in the County of Washtenaw, Michigan, be increased by 1.000 mill ($1.00 per thousand dollars of taxable value) of the taxable value for a period of eight (8) years, 2026 to 2033, inclusive, as a renewal of that portion of the 1.000 mill authorization previously authorized by the electors in 2017 as reduced by the operation of the Headlee amendment, which was 0.9693 mill in 2023, plus new additional millage representing a restoration of the amount equal to the amount reduced by operation of the Headlee amendment, which was 0.0307 mill in 2023, to provide funds to the Washtenaw County Community Mental Health Department, Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office, local governments which have their own police force for the purposes of improving the treatment of people with mental health needs; providing increased financial support for mental health crisis, stabilization and prevention; and for continued law enforcement services to be distributed as follows: 38% shall be allocated to Washtenaw County's Community Mental Health Department; 38% shall be allocated to the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office; and 24% shall be allocated to jurisdictions in the County which maintain their own police force (currently Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, Saline, Ypsilanti, Pittsfield Township and Northfield Township) in proportion to their respective 2023 population values. If approved and levied in full, this millage will raise an estimated $22,409,411 when first levied in 2026.”