Platte County will vote on a new sales tax Nov. 5 to help fund mental health services for children.
Backers of the quarter-cent tax include mental health service providers, who argue the money is needed to meet the growing needs in Platte County. The tax dollars would support mental well-being for children up to 19 years old.
The measure would create the Children’s Services Fund of Platte County to hold an estimated $5 million in annual revenue the tax would create. The fund would be run by a nine-person board appointed by the Platte County Commission.
The board would disperse the money to local agencies that apply to use the funds.
Why does Platte County need a tax for kids?
If the tax is approved, the average Platte County resident could expect to pay an additional $20 in sales taxes a year.
Backers of the campaign include Synergy Services and Beacon Mental Health. They point to a 2023 needs study from the Northland Community Foundation, which found that the Northland has a mental health provider shortage. The provider-to-patient ratio is 840 to 1 in Platte County, compared to 430 to 1 statewide.
“We can use those resources not just to provide immediate treatment, but we also do a lot of prevention with that,” said Tom Petrizzo, the CEO of Beacon Mental Health, during an April county commission meeting. “With those funds, we do a lot of evidence-based prevention programs that help kids who are feeling that isolation, maybe think about hurting themselves. We do that in the schools. We do it in the community.”
The funds would operate like similar 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, which was embroiled in scandal after a review from the state auditor’s office found that the fund was using favoritism to distribute the money and questions arose about whether the money was being spent properly.
After Platte County providers failed to convince the three-person county commission in April to put the sales tax on the ballot, they organized and collected the signatures themselves.
The group needed about 4,500 signatures to qualify for the ballot. The measure was approved just days before the deadline, after confusion in the courts over who was allowed to certify the measure for the November election.
The commissioners expressed concerns over how the money would be used and how effective it would be in resolving mental health issues that children are facing.
“We cannot turn over to the government responsibility of caring for the mental health of all our children,” Commissioner Joe Vanover said in April. “Passing this tax would be a major step away from personal and family responsibility and a major step towards collective responsibility.”
This story was originally published in The Beacon.
