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APRIL 12, 2023
A SPECIAL CELEBRATION
@qamagnews VOL. 104, NO. 15
FEATURED STORIES
Aegis Living Galer hosts Aegis Games 2023 Courtesy Nandi Butcher Special to Queen Anne & Magnolia News
After deciding that the Paris 2024 Olympics were too long to wait, Aegis Living Galer hosted its own Olympic Games last month. Aegis Games, an Olympic-inspired event series and tournament, was initially created as a fun way for residents and team members to come together when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions started to lift in 2021 and the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo were just gearing up. The highly anticipated Aegis Games are now a biennial event hosted across all 36 Aegis Living communities. “Aegis Games creates one more opportunity for our residents to connect, not only with one another, but with our staff as well,” Aegis Living Galer General Manager Nick Sponaugle said. “Our staff is continually learning from the residents we care for, and Aegis Games is not an exception.” This year, more than 5,000 participants enjoyed more than 45 events during the threeweek event. With activities centered on mind, body and spirit, residents and staff participated in everything from “javelin” throws and ping pong to Jumbo Jenga, mind-bending puzzle competitions, official opening and closing ceremonies and more. Favorite activities among Galer residents and staff were trivia, poker/blackjack, and pie eating. In addition to the core games, each community hosted two challenges. The “Aegis Gives Back Challenge” gave Aegis residents and team members an opportunity to participate in local community service projects. Aegis communities recognized firefighters, sorted food at a food
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Photo courtesy Nandi Butcher Aegis Living Galer resident Kathleen Nielsen watches as a Jumbo Jenga set goes tumbling during the Aegis Living Galer’s Aegis Games 2023. SEE GAMES, PAGE 7
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Levy up for vote this month would fund mental health services
By Jessica Keller Queen Anne & Magnolia News editor
Residents should be receiving ballots in the mail for a special election to go before King County voters this month that would provide funding for mental health services around the county. Proposition No. 1 would fund behavioral health services and capital facilities, including a county-wide crises care centers network; increased residential treatment; mobile crises care; post-discharge stabilization; and workforce supports, according to levy language. The nine-year property tax levy would assess residents $0.145 per $1,000 of assessed value beginning
in 2024. The 2024 levy amount would be the base for calculating annual increases in 2025-32. Speaking at last week’s Queen Anne Community Council meeting, District 7 Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis said, as the city’s representative on the Regional Policy Committee, he worked with King County Executive Dow Constantine and County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay to come up with a crisis response for behavioral mental health or behavioral health situations triggered by substance addiction to help fill a need in the communities. He said King County has a very small number of places that can accept people in crisis and remove them temporarily from the public. “This is having an incredibly bad
impact on our community safety in the city of Seattle and in King County, and it’s not good for any of the parties involved, the people in crisis or other community members who are in people in crisis to not have this effectively mitigated,” he said.
COUNTY, STATE ROLES In 2018, King County had 355 residential treatment beds to serve people experiencing some sort of mental health crisis. That has declined to about 244, Lewis said, adding much of the reason stems from how local behavioral mental health providers are compensated by the state. “The state of Washington over the last several years has not been living
up to its obligations on behavioral mental health or behavioral health in general, really, and the result of that has really put a massive burden on counties, King County included, to try to figure out strategies to make up that difference,” Lewis said. “This measure in front of us would get as back to at least parity and hopefully more than where we were in 2018 before the pandemic in terms of residential crisis beds that people can be taken to remove them off the street.” If passed, the funding would be used to build five regional behavioral health crisis center: one in north King County, one in Seattle, one on the east side – Bellevue/ Factoria/New Castle area, and one in south King County – Federal Way, Auburn, Kent area. The fifth
will be focused on youth and their behavioral health challenges they are experiencing, specifically. While that center is likely to be in Seattle, no definitive site will be selected until after the levy passes. All five centers would have to be set up and operational by 2029, but preferably sooner, Lewis said. Each center will be able to take people 24 hours a day on a walk-in basis under a “no-wrong door” policy of access, which is different from how many crisis response centers operate right now. “Our current system is really reliant on emergency rooms and jails be in the King County Jail or municipal city jails,” Lewis said, adding jails
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