In the Dec. 6 T-R’s “Our town, Our people,” Creighton Jenness said when asked what changes he felt needed to be made in the community?: “I would like to see more family and mental health services here in Marshalltown.”

Being in education, he said in the last figures he saw Iowa was 50th out of 50 states. I had heard this figure before and didn’t think it could be right because when I was a Marshall County Supervisor it was a big item in our budget and also the state’s budget. I finally found the information I needed and found that regions in the State of Iowa spent $107,937,329 in 2017 and the state had spent $409,900,000 which placed the state 19th in the United States not 50th.

I’m not saying we couldn’t do better, but we have many professional people working in mental heath and very dedicated people doing a very good job for our people. It’s been four years since I retired from being a Marshall County Supervisor and I really enjoyed working with the people in charge of mental health.