The Valparaiso City Council has advanced a proposal to use the city's opioid settlement money on a new community recovery care coordinator. Council member Peter Anderson says the new position would remove some of the barriers for those with substance use disorder who want to get treatment.
"You have the concerns of where, when, how much is it going to cost, what about insurance, what about my family, what about my job," Anderson told the rest of the council Monday. "For people who have ample resources, that's an overwhelming proposition, and if we look at someone who is addicted and is very likely just scraping by every single day, it becomes even more overwhelming."
The new coordinator would be employed by PACT, but would be funded by the city with its share of the settlement money and, potentially, state grant funding. The city's agreement with PACT would run through the end of 2025 and then would automatically renew, but either side could end it with 90 days' notice.
But council member Robert Cotton worried that the arrangement wouldn't solve the core problem: that there aren't enough beds available. "Now, we're going to have all of our money go and serve as a queue — a manager of a queue, a waiting list, when there aren't really enough beds," Cotton said.
Council member Anderson, however, felt that there is enough capacity for those needing initial treatment, even though halfway houses for those who've already begun treatment may be harder to get into.
Porter County communities had discussed pooling their settlement money together to make a bigger impact, but Anderson said they ultimately decided against that, due to concerns about a lack of support. "There was one city that did not participate in any of the discussions, and that was Portage. And it's kind of hard to pull these things off without having all the money of everybody pitching in," Anderson added.
Council member Jack Pupillo felt the community recovery care coordinator proposal was a way to make an immediate impact. "People are dying from this issue every day, and it's not that this is a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, we've had extremely smart people working on this for a very long time," Pupillo said.
Council members voted to support the funding agreement with PACT, with Cotton casting the lone opposing vote. It now goes to the board of works for approval and then back to the city council to appropriate the funding.
