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Harris Center warns staffing cuts would shrink crisis capacity and psychiatric emergency care
Summary
Harris Center Director Wayne Young said proposed 8% county funding offsets would cut critical services: roughly $1.6M at MPC (psychiatric emergency center) equating to eliminating multiple clinical positions and reducing capacity for thousands; the crisis and access line could lose staff handling ~20,000 calls if cuts are implemented.
Wayne Young, director of the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD, told Commissioners Court that proposed county offsets would force reductions that could undermine crisis‑response capacity. The Harris Center serves about 90,000 unique people annually and answered roughly 130,000 crisis calls last year.
Young said an 8% reduction in county allocation would translate into about $1.6 million trimmed from the psychiatric emergency center (MPC) budget, which he said would require eliminating multiple clinical staff and reduce MPC capacity by an estimated 4,380 people. “To remove 1,600,000… we would have to eliminate 9 nursing positions, 9 tech positions… that would translate to about 4,380 people that we would lose capacity for in the MPC,” Young told court.
He also warned that a $320,000 reduction targeted at the crisis and access line would equate to approximately five staff and about 20,625 calls unanswered or delayed annually. Young said those outcomes could escalate crises into emergency responses, law enforcement interventions, and more costly hospital care.
Precincts and the County Judge questioned the center’s reliance on state funding and the effect of legislative and federal changes on local budgeting. Young said about 45% of the center’s funding flows through the state and that federal policy shifts and state budget decisions could materially affect the center’s FY2027 outlook; he urged careful consideration of offsets that would reduce front‑door crisis access and high‑acuity capacity.
No formal action was taken; the center’s request and the implications of proposed offsets will be part of ongoing budget deliberations.
