County moves to buy vacant superstore for mental health facility

MENTAL HEALTH, from page 1

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D) visited the building Monday, March 20, along with a cadre of local and state officials. They gathered inside to hear Lisa Madron, executive director of the county’s Community Services Board, describe plans for the ambitious goal: to give people a place to be assessed and treated for conditions ranging from serious mental illness to addiction, depression or anxiety.

The facility will use the “crisis now” model, which is new to Virginia but well established in Arizona. It serves both walk-ins and those brought in by police under a “temporary detention order” because they are at risk of harming themselves or others.

The facility will offer shortterm and overnight services. An urgent-care component, staffed by a medical doctor and nurses, will dispense medications and manage those needing to detox or experiencing drug withdrawal.

The facility will also house about 130 county employees involved in existing support programs, from trauma services to mental health drop-in programs and peer-based recovery groups, Madron said.

Because patients need different levels of care, it will offer “recliners,” for people needing up to 23 hours of assessment and treatment, as well as beds for those who need to be admitted for three to five days, Madron said.

Based on a county needs assessment, the facility is planning to open with 16 recliners and 16 beds for adults and eight recliners and eight beds for youth. The youth numbers may be increased to 16 and 16 because the contractor hired to run the center suggested doing so might be more cost-effective, Madron said.

The goal is not to turn anyone away and to offer the right level of care. “The reason this model works is because it starts where the individual is. They’re not asked, ‘Are you eligible? Do you meet this criteria?’ And then put someplace,” she said. Instead, “they walk in and it’s ‘How can we help you? What do you need?’ … So, this model is brain-changing.”

Supervisors decide to bid for the building

County officials have been discussing the need for such a facility since 2021. It was announced in July 2022 that the county would rent the old Gander Mountain store for $434,000 a year with an annual escalator that would push the rent to almost $1 million a year by the eighth year of the lease.

But on Tuesday, March 21, the supervisors made an unexpected move to purchase the building for about $20 million, approved in a 6-2 vote that was not on the board’s agenda.

In interviews after their meeting, Supervisors Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan, Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, and Bob Weir, R-Gainesville, said the board had learned two weeks ago that the building’s owner planned to sell it at auction on March 22. The timing forced the supervisors to make a quick decision to put in a bid. The purchase is not a sure thing, as the county could be outbid. The results of the auction were not known at press time.

Lawson and Weir said they could not support the purchase. During a brief discussion before the vote, Lawson said the purchase felt rushed. Weir objected to the quick timeline as well as many conditions of the sale, including that the 156,000-squarefoot building would remain partially occupied by a flooring store. The building sits on 12 acres on Worth Avenue in Woodbridge and was last assessed at $15.7 million.

“There’s no transparency to this,” Weir said in an interview after the vote. “We literally dumped this on the public. That’s no way to do business.”

But Boddye said buying the building would ensure the county’s ongoing use of the space after it has spent an expected $18 million to transform it. He said the center is clearly needed.

“I know lots of families who have kids who have had mental health crises, and right now, they have to leave the county to seek help,” Boddye said.

Facility the result of state, federal grants

Boddye and Weir said the supervisors have not settled on how the county will pay for the building. Weir said the board discussed taking the money from the the county’s reserve funds, which amount to more than $150 million, then borrowing to pay it back.

The center is expected to cost about $2.7 million a year to run, Madron said, which is the projected gap between what patients’ private insurance or Medicaid will pay and what will remain uncovered.

The county has cobbled together $15 million to cover start-up costs. The money includes $4.5 million from federal COVID-19 relief funds; a $2.5 million grant from the Virginia General Assembly; $2 million from the state’s Department of Behavior Health and Developmental Services; a $2 million gift from the Potomac Health Foundation; and $2 million in a federal earmark won by Kaine and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D).

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PUBLISHER Catherine M. Nelson, 540-347-4222 cnelson@fauquier.com

REPORTERS Cher Muzyk, cmuzyk@fauquier.com Shannon Clark, sclark@fauquier.com Anya Sczerzenie, asczerzenie@fauquier.com

SPORTS EDITOR Peter Brewington, 540-351-1169 pbrewington@fauquier.com

The federal grant brought Kaine to Woodbridge to tour the facility Monday, March 20. He said he was excited about the groundbreaking-to-Virginia model of care Prince William County is pursuing and wanted to learn about it firsthand.

After visiting the building, Kaine attended a roundtable discussion on mental health issues at Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, where he heard from local providers about the many challenges facing the mental health system: low insurance reimbursement rates; a shortage of training programs because of low pay for university instructors; and lagging salaries for mental health professionals, which discourage people from entering the field.

Kaine said he would take that input back to the Senate, where he serves on the health, education, labor and pensions committee. In the meantime, he said, “I don’t have any doubt that when this is up and running it’s going to be successful, and it’s going to be a model for others.”

Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@ fauquier.com

HOW

MANAGING EDITOR, PRINCE WILLIAM TIMES Jill Palermo, 703-608-3739 jpalermo@fauquier.com

By Anya Sczerzenie Times sTaff WriTer

Prince William County residents expressed concerns about high tax bills, advocated for more funding for the county animal shelter and asked for higher teacher salaries during the supervisors’ first public hearing on the fiscal year 2024 budget.

About 30 residents spoke at the meeting, which was held on Tuesday, March 21. Many were angry about their real estate tax bills, which have increased annually over the last several years and are projected to rise again in 2024, even though the actual tax rate is being decreased from $1.030 to $0.977.

“We’ve been promised and lied to that allowing corporations to build data centers in our county will lower our property taxes, but our property taxes have increased for 13 consecutive years,” said Paige Kenyon-Page, a resident of the Coles District.

“You’re reducing the tax rate while taxes are going up,” said Mary Loren. “You say the average tax bill is $4,900, but my tax bill is just under $5,000 and I live in a very modest house.”

Josh Quill, a Gainesville resident who is running for the Republican nomination for the 21st District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, said that he expects the nonprofit organization Willing Warriors to suffer under higher taxes. The organization owns two houses that are used to host retreats for wounded veterans and their families, and Squil says the organization’s money should be spent on the veterans rather than higher taxes on those properties.

“I feel as though we can look into the budget and find cuts,” Quil said. “It’s not only the homeowners that are impacted, it’s also affecting nonprofits in the area. Look into your hearts, I’m sure you can find the cost to be able to bring the rate down so that folks don’t see their bill going higher.”

Some residents said they are unhappy that the board voted to raise salaries of members of the board of supervisors, saying that the money could have been better spent elsewhere.

“There’s been a 70% increase in pay for the board chair—not for our teachers, not for our firefighters or EMTs, not even for our police force,” Kenyon-Page said.

Also attending the meeting were advocates from the Animal Advisory Council, a group of citizens who advise the supervisors on matters relating to animal welfare. The group has been asking for funding for an additional three veterinary positions at the county’s animal shelter to improve care for the animals and reduce extra costs.

Veterinarian Patti Bright, who is the chair of the AAC, said that a veterinarian in a shelter is different from a normal outpatient veterinarian and that the expertise of someone trained in shelter medicine is important to properly care for the animals.

“They deal with issues that your general veterinarian doesn’t necessarily deal with,” Bright said. “These are things like trauma, behavioral issues and infectious disease among populations. It is extremely important that we get the right expertise for the shelter,” she said.

See FUNDS, page 9