Macon-Bibb approves $500,000 in ARPA funds for Macon Mental Health Matters program

Commissioners discuss long-term sustainability before allocating $500,000 in ARPA funds to continue mental health services in Macon

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — Macon-Bibb County Commissioners unanimously approved a $500,000 appropriation in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds on Tuesday night to continue supporting the Macon Mental Health Matters program.

The vote followed a presentation from program leaders and a discussion about the long-term sustainability of the program.

Gloria Smith Cisse, CEO and lead therapist at the Southern Center for Choice Theory, which runs the Macon Mental Health Matters initiative, spoke to commissioners about the program’s impact over the last year.

Cisse said that in the past 12 months, the program provided individual mental health services to 1,233 people, with 850 of them being under the age of 17. The demographic breakdown showed that 71% of those served were Black or African American, 24% were white, and 5% were hispanic or other. Additionally, 61% of the participants were female, and 39% were male. Most of the people receiving services came from zip codes 32104, 31206, 31217 and 31201.

Andrea Cooke, the program director, said the initiative had recently spent roughly $119,000 from its general operating fund, even after the original contract with the county expired.

“I don’t understand—how do they keep getting in this situation where we—we gave them—right now we’re approving a 12-month contract, it seems like in month eight or 10, we should be talking about renewal, not month 14,” District 8 Commissioner Virgil Watkins said.

In response, Cooke said the program is committed to continuing its services even without government contracts.

“We will not let—even before we had a contract with the city of Macon to provide no-cost mental health services, we did that because we felt like it was something that we had the ability to do so we did it,” she said.

The $500,000 in ARPA funds is part of the county’s allocation from the federal government, which totaled approximately $75.8 million. The latest round of funding adds to previous allocations to fund local initiatives following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Funding that we were awarded in February 2023 was again $500,000,” Cooke told District 2 Commissioner Paul Bronson when asked for a financial summary of the program. “We expended $437,411.70; we had an overage of $62,589.30. We have continued this program at the same level of activity since February, and we have used our general fund in the amount of $119,000 to continue this project. And so it means a lot for us to be able to offer it, but it means even more for the people that we directly serve to continue services in the meantime.”

Bronson praised the program’s success but raised concerns about its sustainability.

“At some point we all know that that funding is going to come to a stop,” he said, before asking Cooke about ways to ensure continued funding. She then spoke about the need to push local delegations for state funding to expand mental health services not just in Macon but across the state.

Macon-Bibb Mayor Lester Miller also touched on the sustainability issue, pointing to ongoing efforts to secure long-term funding sources.

“We’ve been working together as a group to try to look at ways to sustain the program—all of our programs, including the MVP program, whether it’s through our foundations that we’ve been working with, whether it’s through some grants that we’ve been trying to write,” Miller said. “We have been looking for ways to sustain, and a lot of times there are matching opportunities that we have, so if you have a foundation that’s willing to match money and we can match that amount, it certainly saves us money.”

Watkins said the purpose of government is to fill in gaps that the private sector cannot.

“I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the private sector is going to pick up our MVP programs or our community programs,” he said. “That hasn’t been the experience of government or society period. The expectation that the United Way or the Red Cross or somebody is going to be inundated with philanthropic funds, I don’t think we should be looking at that. The government is going to fund it or decide to shut these programs down in a couple years.”