DAPHNE, Ala.—City leaders after a public hearing at their regular business meeting Monday voted 6-1 to issue an $8 million bond to AltaPointe Health Services to pay for construction on a mental health center.

The bond will pay for renovating the Alfred P. Brewer Mental Health Facility on Roper Lane in Lake Forest.

Neighboring residents expressed concerns such as the threat of the center possibly admitting patients with serious mental disorders and a history of violent crimes.

“This facility will not be used to house violent offenders,” Turk Schleschinger of AltaPointe said. “Those people would be sent to other centers, such as Taylor Hardin (Secure Medical Facility) in Tuscaloosa.”

AltaPointe will make structural changes, including raising an existing fence from 10 to 18 feet. It also will install security video cameras inside and outside the building.

The facility expects a $13-14 million budget and to employ 200 people.

The Brewer facility—formerly Bradford Health Services in the 1980s and later sold to the state, which leases the facility to The Shoulder, a Christian substance abuse treatment center—would serve as the home for both The Shoulder and AltaPointe.

The Shoulder—which has purchased 6 acres immediately south of the Brewer site—received word that renovations to accommodate AltaPointe will begin in the fall, according to Executive Director Phillip Drane.

“We would have to move to other rooms,” Drane said of the renovation’s temporary impact on operations. “But we’ve been told that we would not have to shut down for any period of time while we were doing the renovation.”

The Shoulder has raised about half the money it needs to build on its property next door, according to Drane, who said one drawback of sharing the Brewer facility, the meantime, is the affect on expansion.

“We’re not going to accept more people than we can take with the staff that we have,” he said, referring to a roughly 40-bed occupancy. “Being in this facility with them would limit us in being able to expand.

“Any time you live with somebody, there are those times when you wish you were living by yourself,” he added, noting that he anticipated no “great problems” from The Shoulder and AltaPointe co-existing in Brewer.

In other business:

The city applied last year but did not receive any grant money; with  the department’s help, the city plans to be awarded the money this year.

Last year’s project cost $1.8 million; developers expect the cost to be about the same.

“This is the most effective method suggested by (Hutchinson, Moore and Rauch, the engineering firm planning construction),” McKean said.

Mayor Fred Small, who normally reads the proclamations, was absent from Monday’s meeting so he could attend his daughter’s initiation into the National Junior Honors Society.