DeKalb County Health Department to regroup after referendum fails

Challenges to public health services are expected to continue, with state funding still uncertain and a referendum projected to bring in $500,000 a year for the DeKalb County Health Department denied by voters.

A proposal that would have increased property taxes about $9.50 per $100,000 in assessed value to support public health services was rejected April 4 by a vote of 55.9 percent (7,715 votes) to 44 percent (6,068 votes).

Lisa Gonzalez, director of the DeKalb County Public Health Department, said state grant funding has been declining for years, and the services most at risk for reduction or elimination, such as maternal and child health, are grant-funded.

“We don’t know from year to year what’s going to be funded and what’s not,” she said. “So, if tomorrow a grant was totally eliminated funding-wise, then services would probably have to go, too, because we don’t have the dollars to support the programs without the grant funds.”

Well-child clinics already have been eliminated. HIV/sexual disease prevention services, family case management programs, and programs to prevent heart disease, cancer and diabetes have been reduced.

Gonzalez said that after learning the outcome of the vote, department leadership must find ways to contain costs and generate additional revenue.

She said DeKalb County is nearing the start of another Illinois Project for Local Assessment of Needs assessment, which identifies three to four health priorities for the community, so improvements can be made to those services over the next five years.

An assessment in 2013 determined cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes were priorities.

“What comes out of those can often steer public health departments,” Gonzalez said. “We want to try to align services with what the community says its needs are. The timing of that is good, because it will give us more data to drive our decision-making.”

Jane Lux, a former DeKalb County Health Department director, co-chaired Citizens for Public Health, which promoted the referendum.

“At this point, all I can say is obviously I’m very disappointed,” she said. “It’s largely unknown what this could mean for the future.”

Lux said the group will analyze the results of the vote, including which areas voted for and against the referendum, to determine what can be learned.

“We’ll mull it over, process it, see what conclusions are to be drawn,” she said.

Lux said most people the group had contacted about the referendum clearly could see the need for funding public health services, but the cost to taxpayers also was a heavy consideration.

“I think it is a hard decision when people have to weigh the costs and the benefits,” she said. “In the end, it was a close vote, but there were more people against it.”

She and Gonzalez see a silver lining: The referendum increased awareness of public health and the financial challenges it faces.

As a new director, Gonzalez was glad to see the support, although the vote did not end in the department’s favor.

“I think one of the struggles in public health is that we never have done historically a good job in articulating what is it that we do,” she said. “It really is something we should have been doing a long time ago, and this effort really did give us the opportunity to talk about what is it that we do, what is the value to the community.”