MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – The City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to approve a $298 million budget, rejecting a proposal to reprogram mental health funds devoted to AlaPointe Health.
The city for several years has given AltaPointe $600,000, which mostly pays for evaluations and treatment of patients sent by Mobile County Probate Court to the mental health system’s EastPointe Hospital in Daphne.
District 6 City Councilman Scott Jones proposed eliminating that contribution and giving it to the city’s Office of Resiliency to distribute to mental health providers. But the council turned it down, with Councilmen William Carroll and Joel Daves voting “no” and council members Gina Gregory, CJ Small and Cory Penn abstaining.
Jones then voted against the entire budget, the only council member to do so. But he vowed not to give up.
“This is day one,” he told FOX10 News after the vote. “I’m not gonna stop this endeavour. The people are not happy about this. And it’s the facts are going to come out the facts have been hidden.”
The spending plan is largely unchanged from the fiscal year 2023 budget proposed by Mayor Sandy Stimpson. It includes minimum wage and cost-of-living increases and an additional 2.5 percent pay raise for all city employees. The city will give the first merit pay increase in more than a decade in an effort to recruit and retain employees during a historically tight job market.
The budget also includes $63 million to improve streets, sidewalks, traffic lights and other infrastructure. In addition, the budget has $7 million for so-called performance contracts for nonprofit organizations.
That includes $200,000 that the council approved Tuesday for Ransom Ministries to work with the homeless population. The additional funds come from cuts to the budgets of the Azalea City Golf Course, public works executive administration and youth programs at Gilliard Elementary School, along with a reduction in transfers from the general fund to capital projects.
Contentious debate
But the most contentious debate centered on AltaPointe, which Jones targeted last week for a proposed $200,000 budget cut. At that meeting, doctors and other health care workers from AltaPointe showed up to the council wearing white in a show of support for continuing the contribution in full.
Jones estimated AltaPointe spent $34,000 on salary, diverting staff from patients.
“What that shows me it’s not about the $200,000,” he said during the meeting. “It’s about the monopoly that they’re worried about.”
Jones reeled off AltaPointe’s annual profits – $7.4 million in 2018, $7.2 million in 2019, $11 million in 2020. He said the city’s $600,000 is about 5 percent of the system’s excess revenue and a tiny fraction of its overall $140 million budget.
“The money the city gives them is going in the bank,” he said. “It’s not being used for the services that we’re providing.”
The city’s contribution would be better spent on smaller organizations more in need of the money, Jones said. He said he spoke with five organizations whose combined operating budgets are less than the excess revenue AltaPointe enjoys. Despite those profits, he said, AltaPointe has reduced services – such as when it merged with Mobile Arc in 2019. He said AltaPointe since curtailed services Mobile Arc has provided to the intellectually disabled.
“What I see is an organization that routinely and deliberately cuts mental health care services to pad their profits,” Jones said.
AltaPointe Chief Executive Officer Tuerk Schlesinger disputed the councilman’s assertions. He said the annual profits are misleading because they are partly due to pension accounting. He also said the system constantly uses that money to repair damaged buildings and equipment.
“We’re taking care of mentally ill people – sometimes, the most disruptive in those hospitals,” he said. “They’re tearing holes in the walls. They’re tearing sinks off the walls, and ceilings are coming out. Those things have to be repaired daily.”
Schlesinger said BayPointe Hospital in Mobile just got a new $1.5 million roof. A new parking lot costs $1.2 million, he said.
“That’s how nonprofits do it,” he said. “We can’t go to the bank and get $10 million bond issues or $20 million bond issues. We’re not going to be able to do that and carry that level of debt.”
AltaPointe head: Doing more, not less
Schlesinger said the $34,000 figure Jones cited to describe the cost of the employees who attended last week’s meeting is inaccurate. What’s more, he said, those workers rescheduled patient appointments and worked through their lunch breaks. As for the councilman’s assertions that AltaPointe cut services to the intellectually disabled, Schlesinger said that was the result of COVID-19 restrictions and changes in federal funding rules.
He said AltaPointe is doing more, not less. He said it had 80,000 calls for new services last year and averages about 150 mental health patients at its hospitals.
“We’re proud to have the best mental health system in this state, right here in Mobile,” he said. “And also, nationally, AltaPointe is looked at as a national leader, one of the top three or four providers in the country.”
District 4 Councilman Ben Reynolds said he did not have a problem with Jones’ amendment shifting AlaPointe money to the Office of Resiliency. But he questioned whether it would have much of an impact. Since that city administration believes AltaPointe should get the money, the funds would end up there under a different process, he said.
Reynolds said AltaPointe is crucial considering Mobile-area hospitals have “gotten out of the mental health business” in recent years.
“I see AltaPointe as a partner for our city,” he said. “They do a lot for us. … You know, hospitals are expensive to run. There’s no question about it.
Council President CJ Small jokingly congratulated Jones on upholding the tradition of District 6, a reference to former longtime Councilwoman Bess Rich, who developed a reputation as someone unafraid to take lonely stands. He said he abstained on Jones’ amendment because he was concerned about the impact it might have on the Mobile Police Department. But he added that he has heard many of the same concerns that the councilman voiced on Tuesday.
Addressing AltaPointe directly, he said: “The only thing I would ask is in the next years, please prove yourself.”
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