Recovery Coalition asks Franklin County Commissioners for support

PASCO, Wash.-- The Benton Franklin Recovery Coalition (BFRC), a group of mental health and substance abuse professionals and advocates, went before the Franklin County Board of Commissioners Tuesday morning hoping to get their support for a proposed drug, alcohol, and behavioral treatment center.

The proposed facility would be established in the mothballed Kennewick General Hospital facility at 10th Ave. and Dayton in Kennewick.

The BFRC is gathering support from local governments in the hopes of securing the money to buy the property and set up the facility.

Once the center is up and running, those seeking treatment at the facility would pay for services, either directly, or through their insurance.

BFRC Chairperson Michelle Gerber said there is a demand for services, with some of the area's largest employers provide substance abuse treatment as a benefit to its workers.

"And they're sending people who need that type of service, they're sending them to treatment agencies all over the state, and in fact all over the west coast. We'd like to divert that stream of patients and that stream of revenue to our own area so those dollars would stay local," Gerber told the Franklin County Board of Commissioners during their regular meeting Tuesday.

The coalition needs $1.6 million to purchase the KGH campus to provide a 24-hour crisis center where law enforcement officers in Benton and Franklin Counties could bring people who are suffering a mental health crisis, rather than bringing them to jail, in addition to providing in-patient and out-patient substance abuse treatment.

Commissioner Brad Peck voiced some concern that the coalition seems to be focused on the substance use disorder aspect of the facility.

"At least for me, unless this has a robust mental health/crisis services-- not separate from the SUD (substance use disorder) but on par with the SUD, that's going be basically a go/no-go from me," Peck told the coalition.

The coalition's goal was to garner the Commissioners' support for the project, and the group plans to come before the board again in the future to request more specific financial support as it moves forward with standing up the treatment center. They plan to provide the same presentation to the Benton County Commissioners at their meeting next Tuesday.