Butte County meeting runs short with lack of supervisors

OROVILLE — At least six items were cut from Tuesday’s Butte County Board of Supervisors meeting after two representatives were unable to attend.

Supervisors Tod Kimmelshue, Tami Ritter and Peter Durfee held down the fort and oversaw a handful of items as well as the consent agenda and public comment, but ultimately chose to reschedule items 5.01, 5.02, 4.04, 3.15 and 3.03 for a later meeting when all board members could be in attendance.

These items included a presentation from Behavioral Health Director Scott Kennelly on Proposition 1, two large grants for wildfire safety and a series of consent agenda items.

Despite the removal and rescheduling of several items, other business was conducted as usual, including a look at this year’s salary ordinance which was introduced by Director of Human Resources Sheri Waters. The board voted to waive the first reading of the ordinance and send it forward. Additional discussion on the ordinance will likely follow at later meetings.

During an update by Butte County Chief Administrative Officer Andy Pickett, Public Health Director Danette York was brought up to the microphone to introduce the county’s new, permanent Public Health Lab Director Dr. Morris Jones.

“I am thrilled to announce that we have hired Dr. Jones to serve as our Public Health Laboratory director, and the reason this is so thrilling is because for the past about 15 years, we’ve had to contract that position out,” York said in her introduction. “They are very difficult to hire and retain, so we are thrilled Dr. Jones is with us.”

In her board member and committee reports, Ritter announced that Butte County Behavioral Health had received a grant to the tune of $4.6 million for felons incompetent to stand trial. Ritter noted that the grant funding does come with requirements.

“With that comes the need for 50 beds for folks who are found incompetent to stand trial that are going to need to be in Butte County,” Ritter said. “And since the new year, our crisis services have gone to 24 hours, and that is something we’ve been asked time and time again to make our crisis services 24 hours. So the problem that I see is that we do not have staff.”

Ritter added that county services in these regards have mandates that can lead to penalties when the county falls short.

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“We have taken creative approaches with our law enforcement where we have done some signing bonuses, retention, all manner of things, but what I would like to see for Behavioral Health because we have so much difficulty funding our crisis services and our forensic services, which are the folks that work with (Assembly Bill 109) and will be working with all our felony incompetent to stand trial (cases), is that we create specific job classifications for our hard-to-fill positions.”

Ritter asked for support to propose that county staff look into solutions for filling these positions going forward, which was seconded by Chairman Kimmelshue.

The Butte County Board of Supervisors generally meets at 9 a.m. on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at its chambers located at 25 County Center Drive, Suite 205 in Oroville. Meetings are free and open to the public.