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In about 2018, Mercer County Job and Family Services, thanks to a children's services levy, opened a new visitation center with a more inviting environment - flush with vibrantly painted walls, play equipment, furniture and other amenities - for parents and children to bond during visitations.
CELINA - Mercer County officials are gearing up to put a 10-year property tax renewal for children's services on the May 5 primary election ballot.
Originally approved at 0.4 mills at the November 2016 general election, the levy has brought in about $438,969 annually to help pay for operating and capital improvement expenditures to support children's services.
"It costs the average family (owning) a $100,000 house about $10 a year to contribute toward this," said Mercer County Job and Family Services director Angela Nickell.
Citing an alarming spike in the number of dysfunctional families in the county, Nickell and social services administrator Jason Cupp in July 2016 successfully pitched their case to Mercer County Commissioners for a new levy to finance enhanced children's services as well as building improvements.
Nickell and Cupp are now looking to renew the levy for 10 years, as demand for vital children's services continues to rise.
"We have regular families that just are struggling to meet some of these urgent needs that come upon them," Nickell said. "That's why I'm a big fan of the levy. It's Mercer County people helping Mercer County people. We use all the dollars we can right here in the county. We use the businesses that are local."
Last week, commissioners Rick Muhlenkamp, Brian Miller and Dave Buschur unanimously approved a resolution declaring it necessary to levy a renewal tax and requesting Mercer County Auditor Jeff Larmore to certify the total tax valuation of the county, the amount of revenue that would be generated by the renewal levy and the cost of the levy per $100,000 of county market value.
To get the issue onto the primary election ballot, commissioners also must approve and file a second resolution with the Mercer County Board of Elections by Feb. 2.
"That 0.4-mill levy, I do believe the effective millage on that with the rollback with the valuation change … it's collecting 0.268775," Buschur pointed out before making a motion to approve the first resolution.
JFS intervenes in households when contacted about concerns of abuse and/or neglect of children, who are then assigned to kinship care with a relative or family friend, foster care or a residential center.
Nickell, back in 2016 when she was pushing for the agency's first levy, said commissioners support children's services generously. Yet she also projected that state and local funding levels at the time would not meet the escalating costs associated not only with child placement services but also counseling and respite care for parents.
Effective early intervention, JFS has argued, can help kids turn around their lives before getting a felony that disqualifies them from employment. And when children receive the appropriate care and guidance and have their basic needs met, they're more likely to do better at school and gain meaningful employment.
"One of the things that a lot of people do not realize is we have some kids that maybe don't start out as foster kids," Nickell said. "Well, that's because they're not suitable to be placed in a foster home, but their conditions are such that they can't be left in their home. A lot of these are delinquent children who become dependent."
That's a sticky wicket when it comes to funding, she noted.
"Children's services are for dependent, abused, neglected children," she said, noting that state funding isn't necessarily intended to cover delinquent children. "But some of these kids are delinquent, and they're determined to be dependent because of their delinquency. We've got one kid now who's $850 a day. There is no way, without this levy, that we'd be able to operate."
Some may find the $850-per-day figure for one child's counseling, treatment and other services to be striking, Cupp added.
"I understand that. But this child has significant behavioral issues that have brought them into the presence of law enforcement. He has been charged with abduction," Cupp said. "So these are people that I think the community is probably safer with them being cared for and hopefully receiving the appropriate treatment to turn things around. Because there are significant mental health issues with this child as well as obviously delinquency."
Mercer County JFS is located in the basement of the Mercer County Central Services Building in Celina. The building is slated to undergo a major renovation and remodeling that will move JFS to the first floor.
One example of how the levy helps children is the kinship support program, Nickell said, stressing that one of her agency's top goals is to keep families intact.
"We always look for kinship placement," she said. "When a child is removed (from a home), that's so traumatic for that family, and we always look for a kinship first, maybe someone who's known this child all their life."
Unlike the foster care program, there's no funding available for kinship care providers other than the levy.
"Every family is struggling financially out there, I would say," Nickell noted. "So it's really hard to take on yet another child. But if it's a kinship placement, there's no monies to pay for them like a foster parent would receive."
Rising costs across the board compounded the problem even further, starting a year or so ago.
"I think the price of gas at that time had started to tick up, and everything else had started to tick up," Cupp recalled. "We were getting more calls from our kinship families saying, 'Hey, can you help out with this?' and we didn't have a mechanism or a program in place to meet that need."
With the commissioners' blessing, JFS began devoting a portion of levy revenue to the newly devised kinship support program.
"In October of '24, we began a kinship support program to where we allocated per child in a kinship family so much money to use on needs of, first and foremost, a child, and second, the family as a whole," Cupp said. "And since October of '24, through the end of last calendar year, we spent over $73,000 enhancing a family's ability to provide for these kinship homes."
The financial support has gone toward school supplies, clothing, food and many other things.
"We don't give that money toward any biological children, but (to) the kinship care children," Cupp said. "It goes to extracurriculars. We've helped pay for Washington, D.C., trips, for lessons to enhance their social well-being, such as karate or soccer or football."
The funds have also been spent on car maintenance to ensure the kinship home has reliable transportation and home repairs so the child has a safe residence.
"Additionally, we are paying for more emotional support for the kinship families who pay for a lot of counseling that isn't covered under their insurance, because this is not their child," Nickell pointed out. "They need some help on how to deal with the trauma that they're all experiencing - and their whole lives have been an upheaval."
"So it really has enhanced our support of someone caring for a kinship child, someone that's gracious enough to take on (that responsibility) when they didn't have to, and through Angela's and the commissioners' and the voters' good graces … (we) have taken away some of that financial worry," Cupp insisted.
Levy dollars are also bolstering preventive measures to help facilitate as normal a childhood experience as possible for the kids while under the auspices of JFS.
"Funding for that before, we were barely scraping by," Nickell said. "Now, we're happy to report that we don't think our kids in care are really suffering from a lack of activities or attention at school. There's certainly not a lack for counselsing or the families for training."
The levy is also a welcome source of funding for kids when they become legal adults at 18.
"When they turn 18, they're not our kids anymore, and these kids are not prepared," Nickell said. "And we've been helping children who have been emancipated from us with this funding."
Indeed, the levy has been a huge asset in that regard, Cupp said.
"We're seeing a lot more kids enter care that have a lot of issues. Unfortunately, some of those don't get adopted. Unfortunately, some of those remain in our care after 18 - and they are ill-prepared," he said. "They may have mental health issues, and they may function good for three or four months and then they have a crisis and need help again, and without this levy, we wouldn't be able to make sure that they do have housing, that they do have food, that they do have a reliable car to get to work."
In fact, children's services was never designed to be preventive, Cupp said.
"We were set up by statute to be reactive, and this (levy) allows us, where we can, to be preventative - and that not only strengthens the child, it not only strengthens the family, but it strengthens the community," he argued. "This really helps us strengthen the community and provide a better workforce."
The Mercer County Job and Family Services' visitation center contains a living room with furniture, tables and a TV. There's also a living area in the basement hallway along with a nearby nursery within the agency's office.
In about 2018, Mercer County JFS, thanks to the levy, opened a new visitation center with a more inviting environment - flush with vibrantly painted walls, play equipment, furniture and other amenities - for parents and children to bond during court-mandated visitations.
County commissioners approved Nickell's request to convert part of a basement storage room in the Mercer County Central Services Building. The space hosts visits between parents and children in foster care.
In addition to a main area, the center contains a living room with furniture, tables and a TV. Here, the older kids can work on homework, play video games or watch movies. There's also a living area in the basement hallway along with a nearby nursery within the agency's office.
"Everybody in the agency did something," Nickell said proudly at the time, pointing to paintings by staff members and volunteers, donated toys and repurposed furniture from other departments.
The entire center is monitored by staff using cameras during visitations.
Commissioners this year will undertake a massive renovation and remodeling of the Central Services Building that, among other things, will relocate Mercer County JFS to the first floor.
Ultimately, Nickell wants to see better amenities to take care of children ridden with mites, lice, scabies or bedbugs, recalling times when JFS staff had to scrub kids in a utility sink before taking them to a foster home.
"We really don't have any plumbing, any means with which to properly bathe these children," she said. "Now that the county is moving forward with renovations to this building, we're hoping to use our levy funds to improve the children's service area to the point where we can provide adequate handicap-accessible bathing."
In the November 2016 general election, the children's services levy passed with 58.67% or 12,309 votes, according to Mercer County Board of Elections' official canvas.
"We're pretty protective of that levy money. If we can draw down our regular operational funding to help reimburse and cover that, we do," Nickell said. "We get an allocation from the state and we use that for operational expenses. The levy isn't used for salary or anything of that nature at this time, and I don't think that it will be."
Cognizant that families of all stripes are facing skyrocketing expenses, Nickell and Cupp remain hopeful that voters will once again come through on May 5.
"We're family people, too," Nickell said. "I always think that Mercer County voters do what's best for families. I believe that wholeheartedly. But I think it's a little scary. That's why it's so important for us to do a renewal and not have to go for another new levy, which would be based on the new valuation of housing."
