Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Voters Tuesday approved both a 708 mental health board for Sangamon County and a $110 million bond issue in the Ball-Chatham school district.
The increase in mental health services. to be paid for with a 0.5 percent increase in the sales tax, is a recommendation of the Massey Commission. The name 708 comes from the section of law which enables it. “The 89 percent of people surveyed felt like there’s more need for funding for mental health, 83 percent supported pairing clinicians with police. 17 percent of professionals found services to be inadequate, and then 69 percent of professionals are saying that connecting to clients was very difficult,” Sangamon County Mental Health Commission chairman Mike Murphy said at an event in January to promote the referendum.
A main project in the Ball-Chatham district will be the repair of boilers and other climate-control systems, as some classrooms have experienced temperatures as low as 50 degrees.
“Right now, we are limping along and fixing things as they are and needed to be addressed, and hoping each day that something else doesn’t fail,” superintendent Becca Lamon said last month. “We’re not asking for a Taj Mahal of an athletic facility or something that we feel is unnecessary; we’re asking for our kids to have an environment that has heat and proper electricity.”
Both referenda passed by 53-47 percent margins.
