Recently, Sonoma County prepared and submitted to the Department of the Treasury an 88-page Recovery Plan Performance Report on our use of American Rescue Plan Funds. In addition to describing how the Board of Supervisors utilized $40 million of its $96 million allocation for the Community Resilience Program, the Report details the County’s Results-Based Accountability Training and Workshops to better monitor the impact of funds spent.

“As a result of the County’s existing RBA work and the new capacity created in strategic partnership with Upstream Investments and the Office of Equity, Sonoma County was well poised to transition from RBA to Anti-Racist RBA (AR-RBA). AR-RBA deepens and expands RBA to focus efforts and resources on the communities facing the greatest compounding inequities: communities of color and historically and systematically marginalized communities. Based on Board input and the legislative intent of the ARPA, the County had an opportunity with the ARPA Community Resilience Program (ARPA CRP) to launch this thoughtful and strategic approach. 

Through the development of the ARPA CRP, the County and its funded partners now have a roadmap for the implementation of AR-RBA across County Departments.” On August 14th, I urged the new Director of the County Department of Health Services to include AR-RBA requirements into the Department’s draft Behavioral Health FY 26-29 Integrated Plan, expected to be completed by June 30, 2026.

Greetings!

Last Thursday, President Trump declared war on local government.  His Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets Executive Order directs his administration “to restore order to American cities and remove vagrant individuals from our streets, redirecting federal resources toward programs that tackle substance abuse and returning to the acute necessity of civil commitment”.  He directed his Attorney General, and Secretaries of HEW, HUD, and Transportation to: 

1. Prioritize grants for states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting
2. Redirect funding to ensure that individuals camping on streets and causing public disorder and that are suffering from serious mental illness or addiction are moved into treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities; and 
3. Ensure discretionary grants for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery do not fund drug injection sites or illicit drug use.

His specific targets are to prohibit encampments, end Housing First programs and requirements, and eliminate harm reduction and safe injection programs.  Local governments which refuse to do so will lose all federal funding.  
Thank you very much for your service, but you are no longer needed in Trump’s America.  He will dictate the response to the needs of states, counties, and cities.
Gregory

On Wednesday, July 16th, from 1-2pm, the BHSA Community Program Planning Workgroup met via Zoom. Here is the Fieldy Summary and Transcriptions.

Fieldy, an AI-driven device, which is worn as a necklace and communicate with an app on your phone, if absolutely fabulous!! I bought one, and wore it to a local Behavioral Health Board meeting last night, and it produced some excellent summaries of the evening’s conversation on pdfs without any work at all. I’m buying more of these, and distributing them to friends who attend local public meetings. I think that demonstrating the ease of using them, and their results, will expand our effectiveness at being advocates for community government engagement.