“They’ll say ‘can you reduce your budget’ and they’ll give us a dollar figure,” Bier said. “They want us to reduce it as much as we could, obviously. The one thing I did reduce was the advertising because we didn’t use it that year so it was hard to justify that we would need it in 2016.”
The commission, which is responsible for helping about 26,000 veterans, is funded by a percentage of the general fund millage the legislature carved out to help veterans.
Butler County’s millage brings in about $3.4 million annually but historically the board has budgeted $2 million or less, doling out emergency cash, helping veterans navigate the Veterans Administration system, arranging and paying for transportation to medical appointments and finding local services for everything from legal issues to marriage counseling. The remainder of that money reverts to the county’s general fund.
Bier told the board that, under the law, the county can’t force them to cut their budgets. Commissioner Chuck Weber said he will push back if the county tries to force their hand and cut advertising.
“I think we do not need to be deterred in our objective this year,” Weber said. He later told the Journal-News, “We are within the levy, we’re not trying to go off the Richter scale, we’re trying to give every veteran the opportunity to choose whether or not they want to go after their benefits and, if they don’t know it’s out, there then they don’t have much of a chance to make that decision.”
The Journal-News polled the county commissioners earlier this year when the vet board discussed having to dip deeper into their allotted money, if the advertising works, and county leaders sounded supportive.
“If it works and it delivers the kind of services it should, and it’s cost effective, sure, I would be on board with something like that,” Commissioner Don Dixon said. “I think we all would. We’ve really have never told them no. They’ve been a very conservative board all along.”
The board has committed $51,975 this year for radio ads and next year they are considering adding television ads into the mix and possibly a newspaper buy with the Journal-News. The vet board is collaborating with Warren County on the radio and possibly television ad buys.
Since Warren County has been advertising, transports for medical appointments have increased 250 percent from 1,225 in 2012 to 4,282 last year, according to Executive Director Rod Eversole.
The number of veterans served shot up to 492 in August. All year the number served was in the low-to-mid 300s with the lowest number of the year, 321, served in July.
“I have one comment,” Commissioner Dave Smith said when he saw that number. “Wow.”
The influx of more veterans also prompted Bier to up the amount allotted for emergency financial assistance from $590,000 this year to $737,500 next year.
“If you build it, they will come,” Weber said.
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