Bangor’s City Council approved $641,297 in funding Monday to support 16 local organizations with treatment and recovery projects aimed at addressing the harms of the opioid epidemic.
Bangor, alongside many other local governments in Maine, has been slow to allocate the settlement funds that it began receiving in 2022. The city is a hub for addiction services, and Penobscot was the only Maine county to see a rise in overdose deaths last year.
The projects will use up nearly all of the city’s available money from national settlements with companies accused of contributing to the opioid epidemic. Bangor is set to receive another $2 million between 2026 and 2038, according to estimates from the Office of the Maine Attorney General.
The council voted 8-1 to approve the grants, with Councilor Wayne Mallar as the only no vote.
An advisory committee led by City Council Chair Susan Hawes released the grant application in October and recommended projects for approval from a pool of 32 applicants, according to Monday’s council agenda.
The City Council accepted the committee’s recommendations with one exception. The committee voted 3-2 last month to recommend a set of grants that excluded Bangor’s public health department despite its high score in the grant review process, replacing it with a lower-scoring application.
Some committee members said they didn’t want to give more money to Bangor Public Health and Community Services after the committee already allocated more than half a million dollars to the city agency for HIV case management services in August.
Dissenting committee members argued that removing the department’s proposal was inequitable since the grant process did not call for denying any application based on previous opioid settlement fund awards, according to a March 2 memo from City Manager Carollynn Lear.
City councilors decided in a special workshop last week that they disagreed with the removal and would award funding to the public health department.
The council awarded $49,358 to Bangor Public Health to fund a nurse practitioner who will provide primary and preventive care for people with substance use disorder at the “one-stop-shop” program housed within Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness on Hancock Street.
The grants approved Monday also included funding for several addiction treatment programs, such as $48,609 for Wellspring and $50,000 for Metro Treatment of Maine.
Grants in the amounts of $48,829, $50,000 and $30,000 for Bangor Comprehensive Treatment Center, Blue Sky Counseling and GBA Counseling Services, respectively, will help those organizations take on patients who aren’t insured or whose substance use treatment isn’t covered by insurance.
“Given the critical shortage of providers and lengthy or stalled waitlists, expansion of our services are crucial,” GBA Counseling Services said in a summary of their proposal, noting that the funding will allow their organization to open spaces for 12 more people.
Three grants will go toward housing-related recovery programs: $50,000 for Community Health and Counseling Services to support more staffing for a “supported housing model” at Theresa’s Place, a housing facility that opened last year for formerly homeless residents; $50,000 for Penobscot Community Health Care’s transitional housing program; $10,000 for the women’s shelter Saint Andre Home to expand its peer support specialist services; and $50,000 for Preble Street, the organization that runs the Hope House shelter, to “support people in their transition from homelessness and active substance use to stable housing and recovery.”
Other awards for recovery projects include $34,000 for Needlepoint Sanctuary to create a recovery coach position; $48,000 for Crosspoint Church to create a discipleship and recovery program for eight recently incarcerated men with substance use disorder and co-occurring mental health disorders; and $50,000 for Timberwolves Native American Church.
Grants will also support addiction prevention programs, including $12,500 for Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine; $10,000 for the Boys and Girls Club of Bangor; and $50,000 for the Bangor YMCA.
Saint Andre Home, Needlepoint Sanctuary and GBA Counseling Services also received grants from Penobscot County’s opioid settlement funding pool.
Mallar said he didn’t have any issue with giving out the money but worried there wasn’t enough coordination between the groups that would be receiving it.
Councilor Michael Beck said he’d like the council to establish a standing committee addressing the opioid crisis to improve coordination.
Bangor’s Opioid Settlement Funds Advisory Committee recommended giving $50,000 to Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness to expand detox hours and medication treatment services instead of funding Bangor Public Health, but the council rejected that suggestion. The organization will be considered for future rounds of funding if they decide to apply, councilors decided in its workshop last week.
The committee formed in early 2025 and was set to expire at the end of last year, but the council voted in December to extend the committee through June 30.
Two committee members previously resigned “for reasons unrelated to the committee’s work,” according to Lear. Those slots have not been filled.
Bangor’s allocation of nearly all the opioid settlement funds it’s collected thus far stands in contrast with the Penobscot County commissioners, who allocated about a third of their available funding in December to grants for community-based organizations and have said they plan to use a substantial portion of settlement funds for opioid use disorder treatment in the county jail.
Both governments waited until three years after the funding began to come in to form an advisory committee to decide how to spend the funds and have faced criticism from recovery advocates.
“We’ve had the opioid money for quite a while,” Councilor Carolyn Fish said ahead of the vote Monday.
Courtney Gary-Allen, executive director of the Maine Recovery Action Project, applauded the city’s work on the grant process but told the Bangor Daily News last month that “opioid settlement money should have hit the ground many, many months ago.”