The Porter County Council gave a total of $125,000 Tuesday to four nonprofits and the county health department to address a variety of needs.
Meg Wichlinski, chair of the Opioid Settlement Committee, said eight requests were submitted for funding through the county’s portion of the settlement from a giant lawsuit against opioid manufacturers.
The Caring Place received $30,722 for a women’s recovery program. “There is a link between domestic violence and substance abuse,” Vice President of Operations Erin Blumenthal said, so The Caring Place applied last year and this year for the women’s recovery program.
Councilwoman Michelle Harris, R-At-large, complimented Blumenthal for the agency’s outreach to younger generations as well as women in crisis.
“Breaking the cycle is what we try to do,” Blumenthal said.
Alexis Dines, marketing development coordinator for Three20 Recovery, said her Chesterton agency’s $25,000 grant will go toward the pathways program, offered at no cost to participants. The agency offers multiple pathways to recovery for clients with substance abuse or mental health.
Samantha Burgett, sheriff’s department social worker and founder of the nonprofit Community Change Center, said the center offers services pre- and post-incarceration for substance abuse issues. She hopes this program will become self-sustaining, as it offers voluntary counseling during incarceration and afterward as well. The council provided $23,688.
The health department’s $27,590 grant will go toward a variety of programs, including deploying AEDs and for an app for first responders to be alerted whenever there’s a cardiac emergency going on so the nearest first responder can get there as soon as possible.
“Basically, like a Code Blue in a hospital,” Council President Andy Vasquez, R-4th, said.
The commissioners have committed a nearly identical amount for that program, said Commissioner Barb Regnitz, R-Center.
Moraine House Executive Director Michael O’Connor said his nonprofit serves men over 18, the majority of them right out of rehab or jail, to recover from substance abuse. The turn-of-the-century house the agency uses needs a lot of work, he said.
Two years ago, the agency received $10,000 for a new roof. Last year, it was $25,000 to remodel client rooms. This year, it’s $18,000 for work on the main floor, including patching and painting drywall. The main floor still has paneling from the 1970s, he said.
“It does make a difference with rehab. The guys see that and notice that” and see people care about them and want to help them, O’Connor said.
Councilman Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, asked the Opioid Settlement Committee to provide cumulative totals next year, not just the current totals, for grant recipients.
In other business, the council chose Adam J. Mindel, of Mindel and Mindel, to be council attorney. “We had three applicants, all of them very qualified,” and interviewed each of them, Vasquez said.
The council also appointed Analisa Warring to the Porter Economic Development Corp.
Councilmen Andy Bozak, R-At-large, and Rivas voted against an additional appropriation of $300,000 for the county’s information technology department to convert from an in-house email server to Microsoft 365, which requires a monthly subscription. The council voted 5-2 to approve it.
“It’s a lot of money to migrate software over,” Bozak said.
Continuing to use the in-house server would cost three times as much, IT Director Lee Childress said.
The $300,000 includes the cost of migrating to the new software, he said.
County Attorney Scott McClure said the Board of Commissioners went over available options. “We are dealing with one of our most sensitive aspects of our email,” he said. “Part of this is, we don’t have another option from Microsoft.”
There are security issues involved with the switch, he said.
“We’ve known it was coming for several years, but it just became apparent last November,” Childress said, so it was too late to include it in the budget.
“What happens if we don’t do it?” Harris asked.
“We won’t have email,” Childress said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
