Funding challenges are causing concerns for the Pulaski County Health Department. “In doing our year-end reports for our health board meeting, it’s come to our attention that we only received about $40,000 in settlement this year,” Department Office Manager Terri Hansen told the county council Monday. “We usually get at least double that.”
And she said that’s not the only problem. “We, right now, to start the first of the year, we have about $30,000 in our fund. We usually have about $120,000. We just found this out Friday.”
Hansen said the Health Department has made several cuts over the past few years, and it’s now down to three employees. She added that a large portion of those salaries is now coming from state grant money. “That’s saving the county about $48,000,” she said. “And we cut $100,000 out, and we have to give adult immunizations. We bring in about $35,000 a year revenue. A big part of that is immunizations for adults, shingles shots and things that you can’t get at the doctor. So those cost a lot of money. I mean, we cut head lice back. We just cut so many things back, as it was. I don’t know how much more we can cut out of our budget.”
Council President Jay Sullivan said he might have a better idea of how to handle the situation once this year’s budgets are finally approved by the state. “We took your budget and we submitted it to the state, and we haven’t heard back from them whether how much of that’s been approved yet,” he explained, “so I wouldn’t get too upset about it yet.”
Hansen thinks she has enough money to last for a month, which should be enough time for the state to finalize the budget. Meanwhile, council member Mike Tiede suggested that Hansen see if other counties are having the same problem and if so, how they’re handling it.
