Dover City Council is ready to approve a new slate of beneficiaries of opioid settlement money.
Dover’s opioid settlement funding decision came after a lengthy, sometimes heated discussion of what organizations should be prioritized during this round of funding.
Councilman Roy Sudler says Dover’s previous funding decisions faced criticism based on the “out of town” nature of several past beneficiaries.
“The main argument was that there’s a lot of organizations -big organizations- that said they’re going to do this, got the money, then didn’t do what they were supposed to do. They mishandled [or] misappropriated the funding. The smaller organizations that were out here actually doing the work… were bypassed, were overlooked. Not this time.” he said.
This year, council sentiment focused on funding smaller local organizations addressing addiction over larger nonprofits.
Councilman David Anderson also backed focusing on local organizations, naming NorthNode Group Therapy specifically as one they should fund.
"One is NorthNode, which is one of the premiere outpatient treatment organizations, and expanding their outreach because they actually have recovery as an objective- not just keeping people on drugs, which I think is not a good use of money" he said.
Anderson has been a vocal opponent of harm reduction initiatives at both the state and municipal level, arguing that providing more access to paraphernalia doesn’t incentivize people dealing with substance abuse disorder to get clean.
Anderson also wants to prioritize recovery efforts over harm reduction in funding choices.
A measure formalizing the list of organizations tapped to receive opioid settlement now goes to City Council for final approval at its September 14th meeting.
