Those funds are meant to help local governments reverse the effects of the opioid crisis by putting money towards treatment services.
The city is expected to get another $21 million towards opioid abatement over the next 14 years, but uncertainty over federal grants had some city officials recommend saving much of the money for the long-term.
“There are no guarantees regarding the amounts or timing of any future payments. I cannot stress that enough. We've got some estimates. There are some numbers out there, but we cannot go by that,” Commissioner of Social Services Kacy Allen-Bryant said.
Some council members argued instead the money should be spent more urgently to help those experiencing from homelessness and substance use disorder.
“To say that we're not going to put out a lot of this money when there's a fire and we're saving our money for a longer hose, or a fire hydrant, or some other preventative things, I think the balance of this conversation is tilted in kind of a wrong direction,” Vice Mayor Dan Wu said.
During the discussions, council members ended up approving multiple motions to spend some of that money.
“Let's just have the discussion now and figure out what's going where so the community knows, we all know, so that our employees, our staff, can go full steam ahead,” District 2 council member Shayla Lynch said.
Lynch motioned to allot $3 million towards nonprofit grants across Lexington, moving an extra $1 million from a pool of unassigned funds. Only $2 million were proposed to go towards abatement grants in next year’s city budget.
That motion was amended by District 4 council member Emma Curtis, allotting another $2.2 million to the city’s Task Force on Homelessness. Recommendations from the task force would involve housing and treatment services.
One point of debate was the amount of money that should be put into a savings account where the interest would be used to pay for grants down the line. At large council member James Brown motioned to allocate $3 million towards the account. Vice Mayor Dan Wu argued that number was too high and offered an amount of $1 million instead.
Both council members eventually agreed to postpone that decision, opting to have further discussions on how that money should be spent at a later date. The city also has $800,000 left in their original pool of unassigned funds.
“This opioid crisis doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. And I think if we can put our community in a position to be sustainable and have opportunities to address the epidemic, I think that's what's best,” Brown said.
