MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission on Wednesday approved $626,900 to 13 agencies, concluding its first opioid settlement grant process.
In addition to the hundreds of millions of settlement dollars to be distributed at the state level through the West Virginia First Foundation, there will be direct annual allocations to the state’s counties and municipalities.
The county’s first, and likely largest, annual disbursement was $1,019,972.
The commission began taking applications for those dollars back in May.
All told, the county received 18 applications requesting a total of $1,988,045.
Commissioner Tom Bloom said the body collectively spent close to 30 hours reviewing the proposals with the assistance of Grant Coordinator Collene Coon before settling on 13 grant awards.
The agencies receiving some or all of their requested funding (and approved amounts) are: Aspire Services Center ($24,400); CASA For Kids ($18,000); Lauren’s Wish Addiction Triage Center ($37,500); Libera Inc. ($35,000); Milan Puskar Health Right ($51,000); Monongalia County Child Advocacy Center ($45,000); Monongalia County Health Department ($51,000); Monongalia County Public Defender Office ($10,000); Mon EMS ($36,000); Morgantown Area Youth Services Project ($60,000); Morgantown Sober Living ($84,000); West Virginia University Research Corporation ($50,000); Wise Path Recovery Center ($125,000).
“What we tried to do is come up with a program to help the drug addiction and homelessness problem in our community,” Bloom said. “A lot of these funds will go to some housing, to aftercare programs, to more counselors. It’s an eclectic group that I’m real proud of.”
It was noted that the commission allocated roughly 60% of its available funds.
“We take this responsibility very seriously. We received over $1 million to disperse but didn’t find it necessary to simply disperse it all just because this was the first wave,” Commissioner Jeff Arnett said. “We diligently went through these applications and made sure they fit within the purpose that the funds were for. I feel we came up with some pretty good decisions that should help a lot of people, and we still have a pool of money there going forward.”
Commission President Sean Sikora gave some insight into the decision making, calling it “a very time-consuming process.”
“We’re just being very judicious with these dollars,” he said. “We looked over the proposals, and areas where we thought we’d be funding something that already exists, we pulled back. There were areas where we were looking for unique instances where people could do things differently. And we’re rewarding areas where organizations are successful in what they’re doing and needed more bandwidth to continue their mission.”
Funding requests from Girls on the Run North Central West Virginia, Mon Health Medical Center Foundation, Morgantown Community Resources, Morgantown Public Library and Your Community Foundation were not granted.
The $60,000 grant for the Morgantown Area Youth Services Project was approved separately with Bloom abstaining due to his work on that agency’s board of directors.
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