The Animal Menagerie & Its Stink At The Courthouse ____________________________________________________________________________________________
			Perhaps there is no reason to be suspect of this magnificent find. But it seems wise to be cautious of those who would hand over a public-owned ampi-theater for $1,000 per month ''rent'' to a convicted felon without first asking if anyone else might be willing to pay $1001 or more. Regardless, before all the "found" jing is spent, a wonderful suggestion would be to give up even $10K of it to restore and enhance the family support services program for mentally ill adults,  with the clinic coordinating a paid aide a few hours here or there into homes of some adults with no other supports or family, to be the sorely missed extra set of eyes and ears.   Another recommendation for county leaders is to use the free, accurate documentation that my website IP traffic data provides, proving again that some in the mental health department of local government chose to continue to violate county staff recreational internet usage policies -- by reading here minutes after the work day started and checking in again, 35 or so minutes prior to the next work day's end. While data clearly does not reflect the thousands of page hits here from that same public-funded IP -- as was documented in previous data extractions given to county officials -- there, shamefully, is still recent recreational reading being done on the public's dime on this website alone. County leaders really intent on moving the county forward and making a dent in the number of  Fayette's mentally ill exploited next month in media's ''Tales From The Weird Side,'' really need to demand that these particular staff get off their lazy behinds, off my recreational reading website from work once and for all and -- among other things -- relearn the lost art of community mental health outreach again. Some have proven, so obviously, that they do have the time. ____________________________________
In recent months, just in Uniontown alone, Pittsburgh tv media has had a field day, reporting with shocking videos of persons with mental illness, often with young children, living in total squalor and chaos, usually with most or all utilities shut off. This week's film at 11, however, reported on Ms. Deb W. living on Albion with a goat, 12 chickens, chinchillas, rabbits, a few flying Rocket J. Squirrels, 15 dogs, and under them all, a foot of animal feces on the floor. These types of ''newsworthy'' nightmares that exploit the mentally ill and hurt the county's image likely would not have happened if community mental health still performed outreach services on a formal basis. A couple hundred thousand extra people didn't need to know about Ms. W's animal menagerie. And it wasn't rocket science, either. Successful outreach always started with knowing the high service utilizers well. Like snitches are valuable assets to news reporters, the high utilizers of mental health services always knew, always relayed concerns and passed along information to their therapists and supports coordinators about anyone they perceived to be ''worse off'' and less stable than they were. They were all each others' circle, so to speak, and so very few of the truly needy slipped through the cracks as a result. Nobody's privacy was violated, either, when this was approached correctly. At yesterday's news conference, two county commissioners seeking re-election and a county controller running unopposed, patted themselves on the back proudly for "finding'' $187K that has sat unnoticed in the county tax claim office for several years, possibly longer. The County of Fayette shouldn't have needed an outside auditing firm to say that there was a large sum of money ''somewhere.''  Nor should it have taken more than a one-minute meeting with department heads to ''brain storm'' about the only office in the courthouse where there could possibly be a huge sitting chunk of unnoticed change.
				Feedback is welcome. Please feel free to reach me by email at julie@julietoye.com
						Fayette County, PA Commentary
					Rants&Raves for other things not in today's paper