Issue of the Month: Health Net of West Michigan (former Kent Health Plan)

For the past 12 years, Kent County has partially funded the Kent Health Plan. This Plan was originally formed by Lody Zwarensteyn of The Alliance for Health of Grand Rapids and Chuck Zech, retired executive from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The Kent Health Plan has recently combined with the Children’s Healthcare Access Program to form an expanded mission. The new entity is called “Health Net of West Michigan.” This new organization’s purpose is to “improve the health of children and adults, particularly vulnerable populations, through education and connections to health care and support services.” Health Net has developed broadened partnerships with more neighborhood support service providers such as Kent Department of Human Services and Hispanic Center of West Michigan to provide multidisciplinary teams of social workers, health educators, nurses, and community health workers to improve access and limit costs of primary health care to children and adults on Medicaid, uninsured, dual eligible low income adults, and newly insured. Health Net’s partnership with Kent County DHS will bring more federal matching funds to the county, and will increase the number of County residents with a primary health provider. This will reduce unnecessary emergency department visits and hospital admissions. See Maureen Kirkwood, Executive Director at mkirkwood@healthnet.wm.org for more information.

Issue of the Month: Kent County KConnect

Ever since 2002 Kent County has been contributing nearly $2 M per year to Prevention Programs for human service issues in the County. This initiative is coordinated by the Kent County Family and Children’s Coordinating Council. Part of this annual funding commitment was that the Council conduct an evaluation of how effective this funding is for improvement in human service outcomes for children and families. Recently the Council decided to engage FSG, a nonprofit strategy and evaluation firm, to help develop a community-based ‘impact effort’. This effort is called ‘KConnect’. The Doug and Marie DeVos Foundation, the Steelcase Foundation, GR Community Foundation, United Way, and Kellogg Foundation all contributed funds toward this effort. The vision of KConnect is for.. “all children and their families in Kent County to enjoy meaningful and fulfilling lives by achieving self-sufficiency and economic security through high-quality education and community support. Fundamental to our vision is that we are committed to nothing less than closing the unacceptable achievement gaps for low income students and children of color, and increasing the achievement for all students from cradle to college and career.” The Council recently selected an Executive Director to lead KConnect and implement initiatives. For more information visit www.accesskent.com/KConnect. As KConnect unfolds I will keep you informed.

Issue of the Month: MSU Extension Services to County Citizens

One of the unheralded services presented by Kent County is offered through the MSU Extension office located in Kent County. The Extension office is partially funded with county dollars, and provides a myriad of services in five key areas:

(1) Agriculture and Agribusiness education and assistance to all types of farming operations. Kent is #1 in the state and #8 in the country for apple production.

(2) Children and Youth programs through 4-H club activities in the urban and rural areas. There are 72 4-H clubs in the county with 1,200 youth involved. There could be more!! This is a way of keeping youth involved in growing activities.

(3) Greening Michigan Institute which is done at the New Downtown Market. The purpose is to develop new ways to use agricultural products as well as teaching basic home owner education and financial planning to low income citizens,

(4) Health and Nutrition through encouraging healthy eating and physical activities. During the past year there were over 4,000 presentations to low income adults and families about importance of proper nutrition and physical activity.

(5) Farmland Preservation activities by staffing the County Farmland Preservation Task Force. This involves one part time staff person to leverage public and private dollars to help preserve farmland in our county for future food production.

Issue of the Month: Experience Grand Rapids

Our county’s efforts to attract visitors and tourists is handled by an organization called Experience Grand Rapids. This organization is partially funded by county dollars and is tasked with the responsibility of marketing Grand Rapids and Kent County as a premier convention and visitor destination. In this way it provides positive impact to the economic growth and well being for citizens of the area. During 2012, Experience GR brought in $127 M in hotel room revenue, 223,000 convention attendees, and an estimated economic impact of over $1 B through use of restaurants, retail shopping, service stations, and art galleries, etc. There are over 70 hotels and 24,000 hospitality employees who are impacted with pay checks. The hotel occupancy has increased each year of the past 5 years, and each year return convention business appears to be the norm. And, in addition to its tourism goal, Experience GR has also brought new business development, better enrollments to local colleges and universities, and improved ability to attract quality human resources. Because of the marketing efforts of Experience GR our influence throughout the region continues to grow. Experience GR has integrated marketing of West Michigan with the Pure Michigan marketing efforts. This also has resulted in increased growth in tourism in West Michigan. Kent County and Grand Rapids have become recognized destination areas throughout Michigan!!

Issue of the Month: Kent County Children’s Care

Kent County has about 900 abused, neglected, and delinquent children in care situations. Approximately 500 of those are in foster care, 100 in various residential settings throughout the County, and the remainder in supervised ‘In-Home” care. The cost is approximately $11 M per year, evenly split between the County and State Department of Human Services (DHS). In the FY 2013 State budget, the Legislature required DHS and Kent County to collaborate with local courts and private agencies to develop a 100% private ’purchase of service’ (POS) model for child welfare services in Kent County. Since then, the County DHS office—in conjunction with Kent County Community Mental Health—and the above entities have developed a plan that will move our county from having 85% POS arrangements to 100% POS. The goal is to create a ‘Care Management Entity’ which will utilize a fixed fee financial model that provides reimbursements to private agencies to come up with creative, community-based programming where residential and out-of-home placement savings can be reinvested into prevention/family preservation activities. County Administration recently unveiled this work to the Commission. We will continue to hear how this collaborative work within the county, private agencies, and state department unfolds. I will keep you posted. Hopefully, it will result in better outcomes for our County’s children.

Issue of the Month: Kent County Treasurer

As we all receive our winter taxes, it is timely to give a report about the County Treasurer and his functions. The Treasurer is one of 4 county individuals elected on an every four year basis. The Treasurer is responsible for collecting and taking custody of all County funds. This includes general tax revenue and the County’s share of state sales tax—revenue sharing monies from the state. He is also responsible for collecting delinquent taxes and holding a tax foreclosure sale after receiving a court order of properties that have been delinquent for 24 months. Usually the tax sale occurs during the 12 months following the initial foreclosure action, so delinquent taxpayers have essentially 36 months to take care of back taxes. The Treasurer also collects and audits hotels for compliance with the county hotel/motel tax collections. In terms of numbers the Treasurer takes in over $85 million in general county taxes, $15 million in special tax for the county correctional facility, $6.5 million for seniors, and $6 million hotel/motel tax. We receive about $11 million in state sales tax revenue sharing. The Treasurer also serves as the Investment Manager for all county funds that are not immediately required for operations. This Investment Fund is made available to all local municipalities. By combining funds the Treasurer is usually able to obtain a better rate of return for all local governments with their available investment funds.

Issue of the Month: Grand Valley Metropolitan Council

The Grand Valley Metropolitan Council (GVMC) was formed in 1990 to be a place where area governments of all types could work together to enhance the quality of life for citizens of West Michigan. It started with 13 members, and today there are 35 governments entities representing 650,000 residents doing regional collaborative efforts together. The GVMC is the designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for West Michigan and is responsible for planning the expenditures of $100 Million state and federal monies on all modes of transportation. The benefits to a government entity being a member include (1) participating in the decisions of MPO and having a say in area transportation improvements; (2) working together on state and national legislative advocacy; (3) implementing the Regional Geographic Information System (REGIS) (see my newsletter of last month about access to REGIS now being free to all citizens); (4) being part of the Lower Grand River Organization of Watersheds, and (5) being part of implementation of other instances of local and regional governmental collaboration. The GVMC recently was designated as the organization to lead the Governor’s efforts to consolidate our states’ 55 different regions into ten large regions to cover all government business. This will be a two year project. The operational and staffing costs of GVMC are funded by dues payments from participating members.