Retired Judge Steve Nardulli was elected chair of the Sangamon County Mental Health Board at its first meeting May 27 and said the board will need to invite more public input. Overall, administrative duties and the Open Meetings Act took center stage at the inaugural meeting as the board appointed officers and considered hiring an executive director.
A job description for a Mental Health Board executive director is expected to be discussed at the June 24 meeting.
Lawyer and lobbyist Brian Wojcicki was elected vice chair, while re-entry coordinator Jennifer Douglas was named secretary.
Other members of the inaugural Mental Health Board are Janice Gambach, former CEO of Memorial Behavioral Health; William Moredock, president of Sacred Heart-Griffin High School; Margaret Seymour, a psychiatric clinician; and Leigh Steiner, former CEO of then-Andrew McFarland Mental Health Center.
The board also approved a motion to add two additional members: Michael Gaines, corrections coordinator for the Illinois Department of Public Health, and David Racine, former executive director of the Center for State Policy and Leadership at University of Illinois Springfield. That will bring the board to a maximum of nine members.
The board decided to hold meetings at 3 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of every month. The meetings, which will take place in room 223 of the county building, are open to the public.
The board also adopted initial bylaws and acknowledged that the coming months will be dedicated to organization since funds from the 0.5% sales tax levy that begins July 1 won’t be available for distribution by the board until October, at the earliest.
County administrator Brian McFadden told the board that there will be a consistent stream of funding for the board to disburse money to social service programs of their choosing. His office estimated the sales tax levy would bring in $14.7 million annually.
“It’s just an amazing opportunity, not just because of the amount of funding. It’s definitely a significant amount of funding that we think can go to help resolve many issues, but it’s also sustainable,” McFadden said. “It’s sales tax revenue; it’s going to be there year in, year out. It may dip during tough times, but it will be there, unlike grants that show up and go away and those kinds of things. So that should give you comfort in that you can do some long-term planning because the rug’s not going to be pulled out from underneath you.”
Nardulli, who was a central Illinois judge until 2016, said the board will need to solicit input from the community regarding the funding priorities.
“I know that the projection of $15 million a year is a lot of money,” he said. “Simultaneously, it is not nearly enough money to address all of the things that I’m sure are going to have to be addressed by this board. It is extremely important that we involve the community to the greatest extent possible.
“The Massey Commission and the Mental Health Commission have provided us with a road map. However, the fact that they listened to the community does not excuse us from our responsibility to continue to listen and to adapt. We must understand our community if we want to develop a plan for services that meets the needs of the community,” Nardulli said.
He emphasized the importance of valuing mental health for the entire county, regardless of background or ethnicity.
“In my experience in juvenile court, the only difference between the problems of adolescent males in the Black community and adolescent males in the rural communities is pigmentation. They all have the same alienation problems; they all have the same substance abuse problems,” he said.
The board was also instructed to sign up for various trainings regarding the Open Meetings Act and how to submit a Statement of Economic Interest to the county.
Nearly 53% of Sangamon County primary voters supported the referendum, which received 17,300 votes. Only about 24% of registered voters in Sangamon County, roughly 33,500 people, cast ballots during the primary election.
The Mental Health Commission’s final report mentions sharing space with the county’s Department of Public Health to save on costs. It also recommends addressing some gaps in care such as expanding emergency co-response teams, increasing housing opportunities and creating more capacity to care for psychiatric patients.
Wojcicki shared a report he prepared that highlights specific issues and programs identified by the 2025 commissions ordered by county government.
I’m trying to imagine White parents sitting down their adolescent sons to have the talk that many Black parents have with their adolescent sons of how to handle getting stopped by cops so as not to end up dead. It’s disturbing that the Judge thinks race makes no difference. All the evidence tells us it does