Shortfalls prompt closer look at mental health budget

NORWICH – Potential staff cuts were discussed in executive session last week as county supervisors continued to scrutinize shortfalls in mental hygiene services.

The department has been charged with bringing in a balanced budget to offset a $300,000 deficit from 2007 in addition to about $80,000 so far this year. This year’s deficit was cut in half from last month’s budget report to legislators. Mental Hygiene Services Director Mary Ann Spryn said revenues had picked up with a full staff.

“We are going in the direction we thought we would go in. We have been looking at structures and total services that we have,” she said.

Spryn, whose department’s budget has been under the microscope all year, has called the deficit in 2007 “an anomaly.”

“In the past, we have always made budget,” she told town supervisors who make up the Chenango County’s Finance and Health and Human Services committees.

The department was understaffed for much of 2007 and, therefore, tallied fewer clinic hours and less revenues. It is fully-staffed at present, with 12 case workers, and Spryn said she hoped to make up a two-month lag by the end of the year.