Don’t make Tri-Citians choose between transit and mental health care | Guest Opinion

Benton and Franklin Counties need better mental healthcare services. Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond said last year that we “as a community have a problem with homelessness, with drug addiction issues and with mental health issues, and it’s increasing every day.” It is not up for debate that we need better support services.

What is up for debate, however, is how we pay for it. Taking care of our neighbors who need mental health support is part of how we help our communities thrive, and it’s up to all of us to figure out a way to fund these services at the level we need.

Gutting funding for public transit to pay for these important services is a bad solution. We oppose this proposal by county commissioners this week.

We are leaders at the Benton-Franklin Community Health Alliance, Latino Community Fund of Washington, and Sustainable Tri-Cities, and in these roles we understand that funding mental healthcare is just one of the many things our community needs right now. We also need to recover economically from the pandemic and invest in sustainability efforts our next generation will need. We must do these in ways that help everyone in our community participate. We are a close knit community that leaves no one behind, and can’t sacrifice one service for another.

Transit makes everything that we do as a region more accessible and inclusive. It empowers more people to participate more fully in our economy and community. As we look ahead to how our region will grow in the coming years, it should include more transit — not less.

Cutting funding for transit will exacerbate our mental healthcare needs. Study after study has shown that people who use local mental health services are more likely to use public transit as a primary form of transportation. Cutting transit will only make it harder for people who are already disconnected from services to get what they need, and this will continue to put the burden on police and emergency responders.

Public transit is also important for our overall economy. Riders make 2 million trips on Ben Franklin Transit each year, and cutting funding for those services will impact all of us. Transportation is one of the most significant social determinants of health and if people are unable to get to work, school, grocery store, or health care provider, the health of our families and community will suffer.

And let us clarify one thing: this proposed cut would be significant. Some members of the commission have demurred that this would be a minor cut to the transit agency’s revenue. In reality it would represent a 17% decrease in annual funding. This would mean longer wait times for riders, and fewer people in our community who can easily ride the bus.

Finally, this proposal is also a bad way to run a budget. It makes no sense to cut transit without first asking voters to dedicate new funding for mental health care, or where in the county there are budgets we might prefer to cut instead. Our transit system is currently operating in a fiscally responsible way and should be rewarded for that, not punished.

We need more mental health care services and we need public transit, too. Both are important ways to help our community prosper, and it’s shortsighted to cut one to fund the other. Let’s find a better way to provide the mental health resources our communities need.

This story was originally published June 7, 2021 at 9:13 AM.