In early July, Veterans Memorial Museum Director Chip Duncan and others specializing in veteran care presented to Lewis County commissioners seeking about $300,000 to start a peer counseling center at the museum.
Duncan has been coordinating with Stephanie Lane, the chief workforce development officer for statewide nonprofit Peer Washington. The organization’s mission is to both train peer counselors and create resource hubs for such treatment. The program in Chehalis would mostly focus on serving veterans who are prone to mental illness and substance abuse disorder.
On Monday morning, Meja Handlen, interim director of Lewis County Public Health & Social Services told commissioners that she, Veterans Specialist Heidi Palmer and Budget Administrator Becky Butler had found $75,000 in veterans relief fund dollars to put toward the program. The team is also working with Duncan to find the rest of the funding.
“We are very confident that we are able to do this … for that $75,000 ask. And it was a really great opportunity to make this work for all the veterans in our community,” Handlen said.
Commissioners Lee Grose and Sean Swope have both recently expressed frustrations with the way the county, state and government have spent money on relief for veterans, with Grose calling Veterans Affairs service less than satisfactory. Swope harkened back to the $22 million in Department of Commerce grants spent on homelessness in Lewis County since 2020, calling $300,000 ultimately a “drop in the bucket” and stating his opinion that if it can’t come from somewhere else, the dollars should be pulled from the county’s general fund.
