Allen County Commissioner Beth Seibert addresses the Lima Safety Services Committee on Wednesday evening.
Jacob Espinosa
LIMA — The Lima Safety Services Committee met Wednesday night to hear updates on a recent opioid settlement that the OneOhio Recovery Foundation is set to redistribute.
Fire Chief Andy Heffner, Allen County Commissioner Beth Seibert and Mayor Sharetta Smith addressed the committee and touched on several concerns related to how funds would be spread out among the nine counties in the region including Allen County.
“We’re looking at $1.9 million coming to Region 15,” Smith said. “For the city of Lima right now, we’re sitting on about $84,000 and projected to have roughly $300,000 over the next 18 years. And because we want long-term and sustainable programs that have been proven the best practices to curb the effects of opioid addictions for families, we’re advocating to combine all of the city and county funds and apply on a statewide level to work through the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board to vet applications for Lima and Allen County families.”
Seibert said that the county is working with a number of agencies to benefit from the money.
“We’ve been making decisions and we’ve organized ourselves,” she said. “We’re really excited that in approximately mid-May we’ll see what applications will be coming across in these counties. But until then, it is a large unknown because we don’t know who is applying and how much they are applying for or what kind of project it is for.”
Seibert added that since Allen County is 19% of the population of the designated region, the county is fighting for that portion of the funds.
“But that means that any applications that we submit as a county have to compete at the regional level so the projects have to be results-driven and sustainable,” she said. “So they’re competing with one another and it’s going to be very interesting to get through this first year’s process and get a feel for how this works.”
Smith said programs that could be in line to benefit from the funds could include anything from prevention and treatment to criminal justice issues and childcare for families.
“The applications will open up at the state level April 2 and they will be accepted until the beginning of May,” she said. “And at that time, we’ll know whether or not we’ve been competitive and able to secure some of the statewide funding.”
Heffner said that the county will know by June 2 which projects are receiving funds.
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
