The Health Committee of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors met on February 23, 2026, with Supervisors Cam and Miley present. The meeting focused on public comments regarding the severe impacts of Proposition 1 (transition from MHSA to BHSA) on behavioral health services, followed by presentations on the county's overdose prevention efforts and the opioid settlement funds planning and implementation.
All right. I'd like to start the health committee on the board of supervisors for Monday, February 23rd. Supervisor Cam, present Supervisor Miley. Instructions. For in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, fill out a speaker's card in the back of the room and hand it to the clerk for remote participation. Follow the teleconferencing guidelines posted at www.acgov.org and use the raise your hand function. Thank you. So we're gonna take public comment first. So on non-agendized items. So any public comment on David Canna. We just stand or approach the podium. Okay. Can I hear me? David. Good morning, Supervisor Cam, Rosa Miley, everyone here. Um my name is David Shanner. I am the CEO at an organization called The Better Way. We serve kids and families throughout the area. I'm here today as president of the Alameda County Behavioral Health Collaborate, though. We're grateful for the collaboration we've had with Alameda County leadership and supervisory board. Um we are here today to again state our strong concern about the impact of the way that Prop 1 is being implemented and the transition from MHS to PHSA. We've um made clear our concerns about this, the impact on roughly 15,000 clients who are gonna lose critical services, and also a need for some urgent mitigation for that risk. We're gonna lose about 27 million dollars in funding in our collaborative alone. That's not counting all of the similar agencies throughout Alameda County, and we're gonna lose a lot of jobs that are currently held by people with lived experience who are going to be now both without livelihood and also without key services that are being removed without a direct immediate plan to fill those in. Um our biggest ask today is for a hearing. We would urgently request to schedule a hearing to discuss this in more depth. We've had some very um fruitful and helpful and appreciated conversations with a number of you and we want to keep that ball rolling. We're we're every day that we add up the calculus of what's coming. Um we are losing some sleep. We know there's other many urgent matters on the county's agenda right now and things that are big, so we appreciate your attention and we would love the chance to dig into this in an immediate and ongoing way. All of you, some of our colleagues are in the room today from the collaborative and also hopefully calling in. So you might hear from others of us today, but I just wanted to introduce that general topic. Thank you for having us here. Teresa Becker. My name is Chris Becker. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I work at Highland Hospital and the outpatient behavior program. I'm here just to give you some information because on Wednesday there'll be a balance and hearing. Highland Hospital is planning to, Alameda Health System is planning to close the two behavioral health programs that they have at Fairmont and at Highland, and these programs are first of all funded by Medicare. Um, only clients with Medicare can have them, which means that people basically have to be disabled or old like me. Um, the programs serve people with serious mental illness. So what I did is I just made a little printout of something from the VA and um also do the program brochure. So other programs serve those who receive brief treatment after a mental health crisis and continue their treatment with individual therapy and psychiatric health. However, Highland and Fairmont programs serve those who need a consistent support to be stable. The program is really amazing. Clients are picked up in a van, lunch, snacks, brought home. This is important because transportation is often an issue for people with serious mental illness. The thing that blows my mind is that we have interpreters who will sit with people in a group if they're not fluent in English and they'll quietly translate to them so that they can actually get treatment, and that is something that just doesn't happen anywhere, and I've worked in a large code places. Um many of the clients have been in the program for years. These are people with serious mental illness disability.