Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant has a “big ask” in his budget for next year regarding mental health services that would bump his department’s spending up by 17.2%.He presented his proposed 2025 budget for the Summit County Health Department to the Summit County Council last week.“I’m really excited to report that our budget is relatively flat,” Bondurant told the council. “That is due to the efforts of our division leadership putting their budgets together, following with the guidance that I provided around what I wanted to see in the budget, them making that happen and providing a budget that is extremely slim. It’s narrow, it’s effective and it gets us to where we can provide the highest level of service for the least amount of resources.”Without any additional funding for mental health services, the budget would collectively increase by 3.77%. With the mental health services, the budget jumps to a 17.2% increase.“The big ticket item here is the $1.2 million requested in new funding to maintain current levels of mental health and behavioral health services in Summit County,” Bondurant said, adding that the funds would cover a contract with the University of Utah, school-based services across the county, and other community needs, including more engagement with Spanish speakers.Bondurant also emphasized that the Health Department is not cutting any services.“This is representative of staff identifying ways to maximize every dollar, still provide a high level of service and do those things that we’ve been expected to do inside of the county but do so out of respect of being fiscal stewards of taxpayer dollars,” he said. “That’s a long-winded, circuitous way of saying I am 100% confident that you will not see any services degraded over the coming year. In fact, as we’ve seen this year … the council should expect a continued increase in community engagement and involvement throughout the entire county.”The post Other than ‘big ask’ for mental health funding, county health chief touts tight spending appeared first on Park Record.