The mental health treatment region that includes Webster County is splitting up, but Webster County Supervisors have joined with three other counties in seeking to slow the process down.

Webster County is part of the 22-county mental health and disability service region known as County Social Services.

Cerro Gordo County has recently announced its intention to leave CSS, and join the Central Iowa Community Services region located to its south.

On Monday and Tuesday, the boards of supervisors in Humboldt, Webster, Pocahontas and Wright counties signed a letter asking Cerro Gordo and the CICS governing board to delay their decision for a year, so that these counties have more time to examine their options and plan on how to continue services.

Because four other counties are also leaving the region, Webster and its neighbors would be cut off or “orphaned” from the rest of the CSS region, said CSS Western Quadrant Supervisor Alison Hauser, a Webster County employee. State law requires all regions to be contiguous, meaning Webster and the others would be forced to join a new region.

“We proposed this letter … asking them to wait another year before making this decision,” Hauser said. “We’re just asking that these individuals would consider the ramifications, that we will be orphaned and that can affect a lot of things.”

Read the letter here: Webster-Cerro-Gordo-letter

Webster County has not had the time to investigate what region would be in its best interests to join, Hauser said. Its only options currently would be CICS, which Cerro Gordo hopes to join, or Rolling Hills Community Services to the west, which includes Calhoun County.

“We are respectfully requesting that you reconsider voting this year to allow us to evaluate our positions,” the letter stated, “to prevent us from being forced into regions or assigned without additional planning time.”

CICS still has to vote on whether to accept Cerro Gordo’s proposal, Hauser said. Counties have to declare if they intend to join a new region by Nov. 1.

“If that meeting doesn’t occur until Oct. 25, that board has to vote on the 29th, that only gives us very few days to decide what we’re going to do,” she said. “That’s the purpose for this letter, to have them hopefully sit back, give us some time to investigate what our options are going to be, and make sure we can still provide the services that we’ve got right now.”

“Don’t all regions provide the same services?” Supervisor Mark Campbell asked.

“No, looking at the 28Es, I’ve looked at Rolling Hills and their’s is completely different than almost all of the state,” Hauser said. “Also my concern with that region is they’re taking on Woodbury, which is going to be a very big project.”

Supervisor Bob Thode, who represents Webster County on the CSS board, said he hopes Webster, Pocahontas, Humboldt and Wright can stay together.

These four counties make up one quadrant of CSS, and have a tight knit team providing services, Thode said.

“I would like to keep this team together because we have very good employees,” he said. “My goal is to keep our four counties together. If we split up we won’t be able to keep the same employees.”

“I understand the four counties are going to be orphaned here, but I am concerned only about Webster County,” Supervisor Merrill Leffler said. “We need to explore what is best for us, not to harm Pocahontas or Humboldt or anything, but they need to do the same in my opinion. I don’t want to be in any way hooked to them.”

“We are hooked to them now, and anywhere we go we are going to be hooked to anywhere they send us to. And we’re trying to get the best bang for the buck for what’s best for everyone involved,” Thode said.

“We’re not saying all four of us are going to stay together,” he added later. “We need time to look at what our options are.”

Winnebago, Hancock and Worth as well as Kossuth County plan on leaving CSS and joining the region to the west, Northwest Iowa Care Connection, Hauser said.

One small region in west Iowa is dissolving, Hauser said, as Woodbury County joins Rolling Hills Community Services, and Sioux and Plymouth counties join Northwest.

Under a new state law, a region must have at least 100,000 people in it, Thode said.

The four counties of the west quadrant have about 65,000, he said.

If the county applies to join a region, that region needs time to vote on approval, Thode said. If the county ends up orphaned, the state could assign it to a region that would be forced to take it, by July 1 of next year.

“This letter, I personally — I don’t care if we sign it or not — it’s worthless,” Leffler said. “Cerro Gordo County isn’t going to care.”

“With the other counties already looking at making these moves — we’ve had this conversation. We’ve had concerns with CSS for quite a while,” Campbell said. “Don’t you think we should start some conversations to look at other options? “I’m OK with the letter. It’s just asking them to give us time. But I think it’s in the best interest of Webster County to have us start looking other places.”

He added that the county is looking at all of its options, and it is not an “all or nothing” situation with the other three counties.

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The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to join CICS about four weeks ago, said Cerro Gordo County Supervisor Chris Watts.

“We made formal application to CICS, and we’re waiting for CICS’ administrative team to determine whether they will accept Cerro Gordo into their region,” Watts said.

“We have lost faith, basically in our leadership in the group,” he said. “There are about eight out of the 22 counties that were discouraged with the way things are going, and what we considered wasteful spending.”

Watts contended the county had trouble getting accurate numbers about how the CSS region was being run, and blamed Chief Executive Officer Bob Lincoln.

“The numbers he was providing were not accurate numbers,” Watts said. “We’d call the state, we’d call ISAC, we spoke with a lady by the name of Jeanne, she has this information. Instead of calling me back, she called Bob Lincoln.

“These are county supervisors that are looking for this information, and we reach out to our governing group, ISAC,” he continued. “I look at it as a slap in the face, she has to go back to Bob instead of getting to us directly.”

Watts said counties in the region were interested in forming their own region. However, he said some counties would not participate.

It would also be advantageous to be in a smaller region, he said. The 22-county CSS is the largest in the state, while CICS would have 12 counties if it accepted Cerro Gordo.

“They want to be strong and small. Big isn’t always better. 22 counties is just too large,” Watts said. “Their admin team is comprised of eight professionals. It’s a totally different makeup than what we have with CSS. I admire their setup with CICS and think it would be a good fit for Cerro Gordo.”

Watts said there was a budget shortfall of $2 million in CSS, which caused concern in his county. He also questioned a number of programs which he said were overly costly.

“It’s just poor business decisions,” he said. “We don’t want to operate like that.”

Webster County has good providers, Watts said, and it would be good to continue to work together.

” We’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen to you and your three neighbors right now,” Watts said. “I would love to be partners with your county again. Bob Thode, great guy to work with.”

Russell Wood, planning officer for CICS, told the Mason City Globe Gazette in August that one aspect that could make the transition easier is that some areas, like Franklin County, use a lot of providers from Cerro Gordo County.

Those include Prairie Ridge, Behavioral Health Options and North Iowa Vocational Center, Wood added.

One of the challenges throughout north Iowa appears to be what smaller counties are going to do once they leave CSS, the Gazette reported. That includes Worth, Winnebago and Hancock counties, who have been critical of the region and how its funds have been spent.

The Winnebago/Hancock/Worth County Social Services Board voted Aug. 1 to request that state officials investigate CSS, according to the Gazette. On July 25, the CSS Governing Board eliminated the position of Sandy Mireles, who is based out of Winnebago County and was an employee there long before the state ordered the formation of mental health regions in 2014.

CSS meeting minutes show in May, the CSS board voted to suspend the voting rights of Winnebago, Wright and Worth due to delinquency of member allocation request. The rights of Wright and Worth were reinstated the next month after they had paid their member allocation requests. More recent minutes were not available Tuesday night.