Behavioral Health Workshop
At a glance
- What: A council workshop on behavioral health (mental illness and substance use) in Sacramento, its link to homelessness, and what the City can do alongside the County and State. It was the first time the council agendized the subject.
- Where it stands: Held October 13, 2026 (evening session). Workshop only, so no vote; the council gave direction to the City Manager and a rough consensus emerged.
- What's next: Staff are to start work on state legislative reform with the county and other cities, work with the county on updating the City-County Partnership Agreement, set up data-sharing agreements and a multidisciplinary team, and report back about a month later.
Staff presentation
- About 300,000 people in Sacramento County live with a mental health or substance use disorder, many of them housed; about 200 unsheltered people are high-acuity.
- County prevention and diversion programs, the 911, 211, 311 and 988 response paths, the Homeless Engagement Response Team, fire department overdose and clinician teams, treatment and crisis options, and bed capacity (county staff cited 566 inpatient beds, with about 30 people waiting for a bed on the morning of the meeting).
- CARE Court is voluntary: of 216 county petitions, 100 were pending; the City filed 47; one person had completed the process. LPS conservatorship is a high bar: roughly 10,000 emergency holds led to 55 conservatorships (figures partly garbled in captions).
- Opportunities: a Harvard Kennedy study of the response model, an updated City-County Partnership Agreement, a multidisciplinary team, the county health information exchange, legislative change, and more interim housing and shelter capacity.
Council direction
- Mayor McCarty: work with the county to amend the partnership; include hospitals in the multidisciplinary team; he will help lead a big-city mayors effort on state law.
- Mayor Pro Tem Guerra: start state advocacy now, update the partnership agreement (Proposition 1, Proposition 36, CARE Court, SB 43), data-sharing agreements, identify high utilizers and meet regularly with emergency room social workers to build stronger conservatorship cases. He cited 79 people with more than 5,000 contacts costing the fire department about 12.5 million dollars.
- Councilmember Dickinson, Councilmember Pluckebaum, Vice Mayor Talamantes, Councilmember Kaplan and Councilmember Vang supported the direction. Kaplan favored an alternative response model tied to the fire department; Talamantes stressed the county's role; Vang flagged the county agreement expiring December 6, 2027 and the SB 802 joint powers mandate of January 1, 2028.
Public comment
- A family described an adult daughter with untreated schizophrenia and addiction and urged legislative change to CARE Court and conservatorship; a speaker in long-term recovery urged mandatory treatment; another speaker said jail is the largest mental health provider and most funding goes to policing.
Sources
Discussion time
About 132 minutes across 1 meeting (from transcript timestamps; approximate).
| Meeting | Minutes |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-13 - City Council | 132 |
Log
- 2026-10-13 - City Council — Workshop led by Brian Pedro; about 2 hours 12 minutes of presentation, public comment and discussion; council direction on state advocacy, the partnership agreement, data sharing and a multidisciplinary team; no vote.
- 2026-10-22 - Page created from a posted agenda; no meeting transcript processed yet.