Rock County to amend Beloit agreement after shifting services from leased office to library and event outreach

Rock County Health Officer Katrina Harwood told the Beloit City Council that the Rock County Public Health Department ended its leased office at the Eclipse Center at the end of 2023, established regular hours at the Beloit Public Library in January 2024, and now plans to shift library presence from standing hours to event-based outreach while returning in January with an amended memorandum of understanding for council review.

Harwood said the change followed a multi-year review of space needs, technology changes and community partner feedback, and that the department determined ending the lease would be a cost-effective approach "with minimal to no impact on our public health services to communities across Rock County." She told council the department will "work with the city manager to bring an updated or amended MOU back to city council in January."

The move was presented as a response to concerns raised in June 2023 about whether Beloit residents would continue to have access to county public-health services if the leased office closed. Harwood said the department established regular library hours—Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.—and tracked contacts and services to measure the effect of the change.

According to the county's internal tracking Harwood described to council, between January and October 2024 staff logged 246 conversations with library patrons, issued 26 "Get Connected" cards used to share ongoing public-health information, distributed 32 staff business cards and provided nine private-well water test kits (about 1% of the department's total test kits for the year). The department also recorded about 25 media mentions (social posts and Beloit Daily News items) noting the library partnership. Harwood said county staff refer clinical needs, including vaccines, to Community Health Systems of Beloit when appropriate.

Harwood listed county service metrics showing Beloit-tailored workload: 28% of licensed facilities inspected by the department have a Beloit address; 41% of communicable-disease investigations involved Beloit residents; 46% of childhood lead-poisoning follow-ups were for Beloit addresses; and 48% of the department's outreach events in Rock County occurred in Beloit. She said the department is "hyperlocal," conducting many inspections and home visits in the city.

Councilor and resident speakers during public comment welcomed the approach. Lou Pier, chair of the Board of Health and a lifelong Beloit resident, praised Harwood's work, saying, "She's very organized, and backs up everything that she says with statistics. And you can bank on what she says as being the honest truth." Pier described the library staff as welcoming and said the partnership has produced useful community access to services such as Naloxone distribution.

Harwood told council the department had established a process to accommodate residents with transportation barriers who need vaccines in Janesville but that no such requests had been received to date. She also noted the county office in Beloit was closed for about three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted the space reassessment. The department said it will transition from standing library hours to focusing library partnership on specific outreach events such as HIV/AIDS awareness and listening sessions on opioid-settlement spending.

Next steps Harwood identified include working with the city manager on an updated MOU that reflects current practices and expectations for the department's physical presence in Beloit, with the intent to present the amended agreement to city council in January.