Penobscot County approved funding on Tuesday for 12 projects aiming to address the harms of the opioid epidemic.
The funds will come from the county’s opioid settlement money, which it receives regularly as part of national settlements with companies accused of contributing to the opioid epidemic.
The awards are part of the first set of funding recommendations coming out of the county’s Opioid Advisory Committee, which it formed several years after the payments began in 2022 to help determine how to spend them.
The committee reviewed and scored 33 applications and narrowed them down to 12 recommended projects, which county commissioners approved unanimously.
Two Bangor area shelters will receive $10,000 each, including funds to support the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter’s recovery programs and for transportation and basic needs for participants at the women’s shelter Saint Andre Home.
A large portion of the funds distributed during this round of funding will go towards recovery coaching and counseling programs, including $43,479 for a peer recovery coach at Needlepoint Sanctuary, $39,000 for the Bangor Area Recovery Network, $35,000 for GBA Counseling Services to fund outpatient opioid-related treatment for uninsured people, and $35,389 for the Access Direct Recovery Network’s 24/7 substance use disorder call center, according to a list of projects reviewed during the commission meeting.
$25,000 will go towards rental subsidy scholarships for Fresh Start, which operates sober living homes in the Bangor area, and $34,880 support the Substance Affected Youth program at Penquis CAP.
Committee chair Jamie Beck noted that the group wanted the entire county to benefit from the funding and chose several projects that specifically operate outside of the Bangor area.
Those projects include $45,833 for a youth prevention program and $25,000 for recovery coaches in the northern part of Penobscot County through True Connections, $46,420 for the Lincoln-based Save a Life recovery center, and $49,999 towards transportation for program participants at Breaking the Cycle, a women’s recovery center in Millinocket.
Beck said the committee aimed to pick projects that fell under all four categories the opioid settlement money was intended to target: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and recovery. Committee member Pat Kimball also noted that the group prioritized organizations that weren’t already receiving opioid funding from another source, such as the statewide recovery council.
Penobscot County has about $1.4 million in settlement funds in the bank, although this round of grant applications is only awarding $400,000 in total — about a third of the available money.
Penobscot County is set to receive approximately $4.5 million from opioid settlements by 2038. The county spent more than $200,000 of its settlement funds last year on medication-assisted treatment at the county jail.
County Commission Chair Andre Cushing III has said he expects the commission to use most of the opioid settlement funds to fill holes in the county jail budget amid a budget crisis. These funds, he’s said, are needed to continue paying for medication-assisted treatment for people in the county jail who have substance use disorder.
The budget crisis has added a layer of complication to the discussion of the opioid funds. Commissioners decided last week to cut $45,000 worth of funding from the county budget that previously supported homelessness and recovery organizations.
The grants approved Tuesday do not offset the reduced funding for those organizations that commissioners approved last week, although commissioners said they would plan to replace that funding with opioid settlement funds sometime in the future.
Still, the county’s grant manager, Wendy Dana, said at the Tuesday meeting that she wished the committee had been informed earlier that the county intended to replace those budget items with opioid funding.