County Hears More Appropriation Requests

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Grant County Commission entertained another round of appropriations request as budget time is fast approaching. The commissioners heard presentations from Compass Behavioral Health and Grant County Extension at its May 20 meeting.

Compass Behavioral Health CEO Lisa Southern said the new location on Grant Avenue in Ulysses has allowed them to add two therapists.

“That adds more services.” Southern said. “We had six people graduate with their master’s degree that Compass sponsored, and probably another three or four next year. One of them had originally committed to Garden City and then she decided she would work in the Ulysses office.”

Compass has locations in Garden City, Dodge City, Scott City and Ulysses that serve 13 counties.

Regionally, Compass has 320 employees, an increase of 120 over the last 18 months.

“Our model has changed with the services we provide, many more services than before,” Southern said. “And so, I think it does attract people, and our payment model’s different, which allows us to pay more.”

The goal of Compass Behavioral Health is to save lives.

“We don’t want anyone to die, and we want people to have a happy life,” Southern added.

Compass is 82 percent funded by services, county dollars, state dollars and grants.

“If we are not out there meeting people, bringing people in for services, taking care of them, we’re not able to meet our budget,” Southern said. “A lot of our grants are money in, money out. So, we’ll get a housing grant and then we just turn around and use the money to help people get housing, so it’s not actually anything we keep.”

Compass gets about a third of the $1.6 million dollars it uses for charity from money allocated from counties.

“That is how we use our county dollars, is to write-off services or do them on a sliding scale so people can afford to come in,” Southern said. “As a CCDHC, we’re not allowed to turn away anyone because they can’t pay for a service.”

Crises services set Compass apart – it never closes.

“We now have a team of seven people available 24/7 throughout our 13 counties,” Southern added. “We definitely have more people on call than any other center.”

Compass is one of the few centers in the state that has both an adult and a children’s crises house.

The request to Grant Cunty is $25,000, which is similar to last year. The county did not approve the request at this meeting, but will consider it – along with requests from other entities – when it formulates the next fiscal year budget.

Also:

•Monica Walker, Extension agent for family and community wellness and 4-H and the unit director for Grant County Extension also made a presentation to the county, explaining what the Extension office provides to the county. Walker brought in Lakin Cherry and Tara Anderson to explain their roles at the extension office.

Anderson is the SNAP nutrition educator and Cherry is the agriculture and natural resources extension agent.

Walker thanked the commissioners for their investment in extension and explained they are an extension of unbiased university educational research.

“So, we’re bringing the benefits of that research, research-based programs, to Grant County,” Walker said.

Cherry explained some of her programs, including an alternative crops program that brought 20 farmers participate; a calf program where she teamed with Hugoton, Liberal, and Satanta extension agencies to discuss replacement heifers and cow costs in Kansas.

“We have 50 4-H members just in livestock this year,” Cherry added. “With that, we also have a judging team this year, and I have 10 kids on it; they’re doing really well for starting up this year for the first time.”

Cherry also conducts Youth Quality Care training for animal health for 4-H’ers, which had 32 participants.

Anderson discussed her programs, such as free nutrition programs for low-income audiences; a junior chef program for kids; a fresh conversations class at the senior center.

Walker explained the multitude of services she provides, and asked for an increase of $7,700 to maintain where they are now due to increased costs.

•The commission renewed its contract with and reappointed Cindy Wellbrook as Grant County Appraiser, and heard from Century Business Technology’s Keith Rathbun, who discussed email migration. The county is moving away from Pioneer Communications as Pioneer will no longer offer email beginning in June 2026.

“Right now, basically what they’re doing is you can’t add any new lines,” Rathbun said. “So, we’ll manage what you got, keep things going. They’re doing it the right way.”

The current emails will forward for at least the next year, and all old emails will migrate to the new domain. The new email domain will tie to the county Website’s domain, @grantcoks.org.

•Grant County Senior Center director Nancy Borthwick said Esther Walker resigned from the Senior Center Board of Directors and asked the commissioners if she could request Dee Longoria to replace her on the board, which the commissioners approved. Borthwick also said John Nickell is leaving and asked if the commission would approve Vern Hastert to replace him.

“I think those would be two good people on that board,” said commissioner John Martin.