Against commissioners’ wishes, Platte County will vote on tax for kids’ mental health

Corky McCaffrey, the community engagement coordinator for Synergy Services, a nonprofit that helps restore the lives of children in mental or physical crisis in Platte and Clay counties, will never forget one profound success.

The child was 7 years old, abused and neglected and found locked in his mother’s house. He weighed only 20 pounds, not much more than an infant, and hadn’t been to the doctor in years.

It took years of care, but by the time the boy was around 10 years old, he was smiling, full of life, high-fiving and joking with workers, said McCaffrey. The child continued to receive therapy and counseling services from Synergy through high school.

“That is exactly what we do at Synergy,” McCaffrey said. On Nov. 5, the organization will be among a cohort to benefit should voters in Platte County approve a new quarter-cent sales to support children’s services.

“We figured out that as humans, we just have this tremendous capacity for resilience,” she said. “We can bounce back from just about anything that happens to us, as long as we have the appropriate resources to do that.”

She said services from Synergy and other nonprofits literally save lives.

If approved, the Children’s Services Fund would add a quarter-cent tax on sales made in Platte County. It’s estimated to raise nearly $5 million a year, which would cost the average county resident about $20 a year, according to the coalition pushing for the tax.

Platte County’s sales tax currently sits at 5.48%, largely made up of the statewide sales tax of 4.23%. That doesn’t include additional sales taxes that some cities, fire districts or other jurisdictions add on.

The county’s three commissioners, all Republican, refused to put the proposed tax on the ballot in the spring because they said they didn’t want to expand the government’s footprint, prompting supporters to turn to the community for signatures. Supporters needed at least 8% of the county’s eligible voters to put the question on the ballot, or about 4,500 valid signatures.

Several Northland nonprofits, including Beacon Mental Health, Feed Northland Kids and Synergy, formed a coalition to spearhead the campaign and gathered about 8,000 signatures in six weeks.

In August, a judge ordered Platte County and its Board of Elections to place the Children’s Services Fund on the ballot. The question will appear as follows:

“Shall Platte County, solely for the purposes of establishing a community children’s services fund for the purpose of providing services to protect the well-being and safety of children and youth 19 years of age or less and to strengthen families, be authorized to levy a sales tax of one-quarter of one cent in Platte County.”

Mental health needs are at an all-time high

Platte County’s youth mental health problems are soaring, according to the Missouri data.

A survey conducted by the Northland Community Foundation revealed that 9% of the county’s students seriously considered suicide in 2022. The state acknowledges both Platte and Clay counties have a shortage of mental health providers.

In Platte County, the provider-to-patient ratio was one provider to every 840 patients in 2022. These numbers may increase with the closing of two mental health facilities in the Northland in November.

According to the Northland Community Foundation, the county has no mental health centers specifically for youth.

Tom Petrizzo, the CEO of Beacon Mental Health, said kids and teens across the Northland are facing challenges prompted by their experiences on social media, anxiety from COVID and more — issues other generations did not have to go through.

“We’re in a different environment,” he said. “That, to me, just says we need additional resources to build resilience and help young people when they’re faced with these kinds of environmental pressures. It’s just a different world.”

Though not specific to Platte County, calls from Missouri to the national 988 suicide and mental health crisis line jumped by more than 130% from 2022 to 2024, according to Beacon Mental Health.

Petrizzo said the Children’s Services Fund would allow schools to hire master-level clinicians and specialists right within the schools. He said now, students’ mental health needs fall on either a limited number of counselors and psychologists or in some cases, on the shoulders of non-trained staff members.

“The school personnel aren’t qualified generally to provide those services, nor do they have the funding through the property tax to do that,” he said.

Pushback in Platte

Despite the push from health and social service providers in the community, Platte County commissioners argued health care is not the responsibility of the government and didn’t want the tax question to go before voters.

They and other opponents are concerned about taxpayer money being funneled into private nonprofits to benefit kids in the county, pointing out that not every taxpayer has children.

The commission would have some influence over how the money is spent, but not directly. They would select board members from the community to manage the fund who would be responsible for disbursing it.

“If this passes for the first few years, the money might be spent on good conservative causes,” said Joe Vanover, Platte County commissioner for District 2. “I’m genuinely afraid that in future years, if liberals are elected to the county commission, they’ll appoint liberal members to this board of directors, and the money will be spent on outrageous liberal projects.”

How it would work

Unlike property taxes, the Children’s Services Fund would come from a sales tax, meaning residents as well as people who live outside of the county would pay for it when they make purchases in Platte County, including at the airport.

The money collected for the fund would be managed by a board of community members, whom commissioners would appoint.

The board would be managed by an outside auditing firm. Nonprofits and schools would be allowed to apply for grants from the tax money.

Platte County wouldn’t be the first county in the Kansas City area, or Missouri, to approve this kind of fund. In 2016, Jackson County voted in favor of a similar tax with an original limit of five years. In 2022, voters renewed the fund without a sunset.

Clay County and six other counties across Missouri also have a similar tax fund for children’s services.

Residents are invited to a town hall meeting at the Parkville Living Center on Wednesday at 6 p.m. to hear from both sides about the tax.