Four resign from Cape County Mental Health Board, one angrily

Four recent resignations from Cape Girardeau County's Mental Health Mill Tax Board are not related, according to its outgoing chairman, the Rev. Sam Roethemeyer.

In October, he asked the county commission not to reappoint him when his term expires Dec. 31; so did fellow board member Ellen Lorberg. Marcia Ritter, citing the demands of her job as a city of Cape Girardeau councilwoman in her Nov. 18 resignation letter, leaves her seat one year early. Terms on the 13-member board last three years.

Roethemeyer said he and Lorberg have each served for more than a decade and felt it was time to make room for new people. The board disburses $900,000 in county money each year to county mental health agencies.

A fourth board member, treasurer Cindi Kramer, resigned Nov. 17 because she said she was hurt and angry.

"I have spent way too much time and effort taking care of the CCMHB financial records to be treated this way," she wrote in a resignation letter delivered to the commission Monday, which ended with praise for the mental health board members.

Kramer is mad at Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones, who, until recently, she considered a lifelong family friend. She volunteered for the board four years ago at his request, she said Wednesday.

At the board's Oct. 30 meeting, Jones made a rare appearance and asked her to turn over the financial records for an audit. She promised to do so, but the sudden illness and death of her father-in-law, plus his funeral, delayed her plans. She said she called the county auditor's office to explain the delay and was "treated with nothing but kindness."

But on Nov. 17, Kramer received a call from incoming board chairman Don Pugh, saying Jones wanted the records in the next two days "or he would send a sheriff's deputy to my home to get them," Kramer wrote. Pugh confirmed Kramer's account.

Kramer, who keeps the books for her family's plumbing company, said she welcomes an audit but was "extremely hurt" by Jones' remark.

Jones said little Wednesday about the resignations.

"I don't know. There's some that have been on there a long time, and they said it's time. They want to quit, and that's all I know. I don't know about any controversy," Jones said. "I'm not interested in talking about this."

County Collector Diane Diebold, who attended the Oct. 30 meeting as a board member for Safe House for Women, said Kramer's budget presentation that night "was excellent."

Other board members said they were shocked and dismayed by Kramer's resignation.

Pugh said the board's January meeting will focus on replacing Kramer for a job that's "not going to be an easy position to fill."

As of Wednesday, 11 people have applied to fill the four openings on the all-volunteer board: Tim Rademaker, Ada L. Cruce, Janice T. Unger, Richard Kuntze, Kenneth Green, Steve Marchbanks, Evelyn Boardman Wiethop, Lisa Huey, Linda Keena, Karen Buchheit and Ellen Dillon.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646