CASSOPOLIS — Woodlands Behavioral Health Network officials said they are still unclear about the organization’s next steps following a meeting of its board Tuesday evening.

The confusion comes after a vote by the Cass County Board of Commissioners last Thursday. At its most recent meeting, commissioners approved two resolutions regarding Woodlands, a local entity that provides services and treatments to those dealing with substance abuse, mental illness and developmental disabilities. The first resolution dissolved the authority from Woodlands, which receives $195,000 of its nearly $13 million budget from the county yearly.

The entity’s authority, which allows it to own property and borrow money, was initially granted in 1996 and could only be dissolved by a vote by the Cass County Board of Commissioners. The resolution will be effective one year following the State Department of Mental Health’s notification of the vote. At that point, all debt incurred by Woodlands and property purchasing will fall to the county.

The second resolution approved authorizes the county administrator and chief judge to engage a consultant to evaluate the mental health services, finances, needs and facilities currently offered by Woodlands. Under the resolution, a report will be provided by Oct. 17.

Following Thursday’s vote, Woodlands staff and board members said they believed the decision to revoke Woodlands’ authority status was initially spurred by the entity’s planned purchase of the former Midwest Energy and Communications building on M-60 in Cassopolis.

The planned purchase, which commissioners said is not off the table at this point, has been negotiated since 2016 and was approved for a loan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The space is needed to expand mental health services and better serve its clients, according to Woodlands CEO Kathy Sheffield. Sheffield added that a June evaluation from the International Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities determined Woodlands was well-organized, in good financial status and in need of additional space to expand its services.

During Tuesday’s Woodlands board meeting, which was attended by county commissioners Robert Benjamin, Skip Dyes and Michael Grice, Thursday’s resolutions were discussed, with Woodlands officials saying that they were “concerned” and “alarmed” by the vote.

“I was stunned by the resolution that you all made,” Sheffield said Tuesday as she addressed the commissioners in the room. “The resolution has somehow changed the conversation to our service base, which I think is very egregious that [the board] has turned the conversation into something about services we are not providing. I was alarmed that in that resolution that there was some disparaging and saying that we need help to decide what we need. We see the people that we serve every day. We’ve done our due diligence. We know the space we need. … I’m concerned that this has called Woodlands’ reputation into question.”

Benjamin, who serves as chair to the board of commissioners, said Thursday’s resolutions were not intended to question the quality of the services provided by Woodlands. Instead, he said he wanted to have a holistic look into what mental health services are being supplied to Cass County, where programs can be added and where investments need to be made.

“My view is us doing a partnership,” Benjamin said. “This consultant that we were looking to help fund was to help determine what are we missing in the county — together, not the county or Woodlands, together. Then we could take that to the board, and say ‘hey, these are the things that we are lacking. What are the recommendations?’”

Sandra Levine, director for intellectual and developmental disabilities at Woodlands, said the vote rattled her staff, who are afraid about their jobs, benefits and wages changing.

“[Revoking authority status] is adversarial, and it terrorizes our staff. That’s how they feel about it,” she said. “They feel their jobs are threatened. They feel their benefits are threatened. They feel that the services they provide are threatened. They feel the people they serve are being marginalized.”

Benjamin maintained that dissolving Woodlands’ authority would only affect its borrowing and property buying power. He said that staffing, wages, benefits and services would not be affected.

Following Tuesday’s meeting, Sheffield said that while Woodlands welcomes input from the county and is happy to work with the county to find resources and improve mental health services, she was concerned with the way the board of commissioners went about meeting that end.

“[They] wouldn’t have had to do this if [their] aim is to truly improve mental health services,” she said. “[They] certainly don’t have to take our authority status away.”

At this point, Sheffield said she is still not clear what the next steps for Woodlands will be.

According to Benjamin, the picture of what next steps look like will become more apparent after the evaluation of Woodlands approved Thursday by the board of commissioner is complete.

“I’m really hoping we find a win-win type of direction,” he said. “We want to take a step back, look at the big picture, and say, ‘What do we need to do for Cass County?’ Then, we need to do that. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can do in a couple of days or a week. We are hoping we accomplish this over the next 90 days as a partnership with Woodlands.”