Health department grapples with budget woes

FINDLAY — Nine months after an abrupt halt to federal funding, Hancock Public Health is continuing to weather budget challenges, but Health Commissioner Lindsay Summit said she is ending the year more optimistic than she was a month ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government devoted more money to public health, which got filtered through state to local agencies. Summit said one priority was technology, including adding new technology to better keep up with ever-changing COVID statistics and records. Existing servers and software that hadn't been updated in several years for budgetary reasons also got upgrades. COVID-era funding also went to enhancing operations. This included expanding the ability to communicate, such as translating materials into other languages. "We were all of the sudden in the public's eye and they needed us," Summit said. "So we needed to be able to be available to them." She added that many employees, including the health commissioner at the time, the epidemiologist and several members of the leadership team, were working around the clock at that point. They also built and strengthened partnerships with other community organizations to address the crisis. COVID funding has been decreasing since then, and Hancock Public Health had expected some of this funding to end at the end of the calendar year. But in March, the federal government ordered this year's funding stopped, along with federal funding to a variety of other agencies and organizations, she said. Summit said she received notification one Tuesday evening that this funding had been halted as of midnight the previous Monday. This funding represents about $220,000 out of a $4 million annual budget. "When I get that notification on Tuesday, I'm going, 'Oh, no, I have contractors remodeling my clinic over there,'" Summit recalled. "My clinic is drywall and I have to tell them, 'I need you to pull off of this job.'" She said the contractors, familiar with this kind of thing from other government jobs, were understanding and gracious. But she needed to find funding somewhere in order to at least complete enough renovations to allow the clinic to safely open to the public. "Unfortunately, that required us then to tap into our general fund," she said. In June of this year, the Board of Health announced a plan to close for six furlough days, one during each of the final six months of 2025. In November, they approved 10 furlough days scheduled throughout 2026, beginning in February. Throughout, while making these decisions, the emphasis has been on making sure Hancock Public Health can offer services mandated by the Ohio Department of Health, Summit said. She said they were hoping to be able to get some of the lost federal funding back, but were not successful. "It's been a hard year for grants, period," she added. "I don't think we're alone." However, Hancock Public Health recently received confirmation that it would receive a Family Connects Ohio grant of up to $324,000. The funding, part of a state initiative, will allow public health nurses to visit homes of families with newborns, with the goal of preventing infant deaths as well as addressing maternal mental health issues sooner rather than later. Summit said four other grant applications are in process, each of which could bring in more than $100,000. Nearly half the health department's $4 million budget comes from grants and contracts, including federal, state and local funding sources. About $638,000 of Hancock Public Health's annual budget comes from local assessments, meaning contributions from both the city of Findlay and Hancock County. The city and county operated separate health departments prior to a merger at the beginning of 2016. Summit explained that the contract established as part of that merger allows the health department to request funding increases only once every three years, and these requests are calculated in relation to changes to the consumer price index. In spring 2026 she will request a 4% increase in funding for calendar years 2027, 2028 and 2029. However, the local assessment funding for 2026 is already determined based on the negotiations from three years earlier. In the meantime, the health department are also exploring ways to bring in at least smaller amounts of money on a local level. For example, plumbing inspection fees are lower in Hancock County than most surrounding counties, and the board hasn't looked at increasing them since the 2016 merger, Summit said. With trends in vaccinations decreasing, they also started working with a program called VaxCare to purchase vaccines. Summit said this helps ensure they purchase as many doses of vaccine as they will be giving out, rather than risking purchasing too many and having some expire. In 2024, Hancock Public Health spent nearly $406,000 on vaccines. Summit said there have been no layoffs, although over the last few years the health department has opted not to replace a few people who moved on to other jobs. There are now 28 full-time employees, down from 32 when Summit began her tenure in early 2024. Despite the uncertainty, Summit said she is more optimistic at the end of December than she had been at the end of November. Learning Hancock Public Health would receive the Family Connects Ohio grant was a piece of good news that she can now count on, after quite a while in "limbo," she said. Summit said she has been thinking back to the economic downturn of 2007-2008. At the time, she was director of environmental health for the county health department. The county health commissioner informed her and others that they would be decreasing their hours. Environmental health was less busy than other parts of the department, since their work includes issuing permits for new construction, and little of this was happening. So Summit also went to assist the nursing team, taking on a different role for a time so she could keep her job. Having lived through these challenges before, she is aware that sometimes public health hits a funding low like this, and will just need to pull through it. "There's going to be hard decisions," she said. "But I'm confident we have a strong team." She said she's grateful for the dedication of her staff, many of whom have been there for many years and have a great deal of institutional knowledge to contribute. Despite the furlough days and the uncertainty over the financial future, she said she hasn't heard the kind of complaints a director might expect in this kind of situation. She attributes this to the fact that people who work in public health choose that field because it's important to them, and they tend to remain committed to it. Summit said the public gained a better appreciation of the work done by public health during the pandemic. While not everyone is following their work as closely now as they were then, she said they're still more engaged with and aware of public health than they were before 2020. As an example, she said that the environmental health department's restaurant inspections, which are posted online, were briefly not available while they were changing software. To their surprise, employees found themselves receiving calls from community members wanting to know what had happened. "So I think people understand our importance more than, maybe, we realized," she said.