Explanation
BACKGROUND: The City of Columbus has been awarded the Law Enforcement Diversion Program Grant Award from the State of Ohio Attorney General’s Office for the 2020 fiscal year. This program provides funding to support increased treatment, new tools for law enforcement, and expanding prevention to combat the opioid epidemic. This grant award will allow the Columbus Division of Police to maintain peace officer engagement with the Columbus Division of Fire’s (CFD) Rapid Response Emergency Addiction Crisis Team (RREACT). The project’s goal is to reduce the number of narcotics-associated police calls for service within the City of Columbus areas experiencing the highest rate of overdose calls, from data collected by CPD and CFD. This project involves partnering CPD Crisis Intervention Trained (CIT) law enforcement officers with CFD paramedics, social workers and trauma specialists to provide multi-disciplinary outreach services to survivors of an opioid overdose and their families within 72 hours of overdose, specifically for individuals who initially refused transport to clinical treatment facilities. The project objectives are to get said individuals into treatment at a target rate of 60%, to gather necessary intelligence for pre-emptive narcotics enforcement and future overdose prevention, and to stabilize households by providing necessary assistance and/or referrals to treatment options, recovery support, counseling, and mental health treatment services in an effort to reduce barriers to accessing treatment for the substance user. Therefore, the Public Safety Director is required to sign a grant award on behalf of the City.
Emergency Designation: Emergency legislation is necessary to make the funds available as soon as possible for the grant award, effective as of July 1, 2020.
FISCAL IMPACT: All appropriated funds will be reimbursed by the grant award. The grant appropriation will be activated upon receipt of a fully-executed agreement.
Title
To authorize and direct the Public Safety Director of the City of Columbus to accept a grant award through the FY20 Law Enforcement Diversion Program from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office; to authorize an appropriation of $62,500.00 from the unappropriated balance of the General Government Grant Fund to the Division of Police to cover the costs associated with the FY20 Law Enforcement Diversion Program; and to declare an emergency. ($62,500.00)
Body
WHEREAS, the Columbus Division of Police seeks to address the ongoing opioid epidemic in Ohio through a continued partnership with the Columbus Division of Fire’s (CFD) Rapid Response Emergency Addiction Crisis Team (RREACT); and,
WHEREAS, the City of Columbus, Division of Police was awarded funding through the FY20 Law Enforcement Diversion Program from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office; and,
WHEREAS, an emergency exists in the usual daily operations of the Division of Police, Department of Public Safety, in that it is immediately necessary to accept and appropriate the FY20 Law Enforcement Diversion Program Grant award in order to make funds available for the grant award period, thereby preserving the public peace, health, property, safety, and welfare; now, therefore:
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS:
SECTION 1. That the Safety Director of the City of Columbus be and is hereby authorized and directed to accept a FY20 Law Enforcement Diversion Program Grant award from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
SECTION 2. That from the unappropriated monies and from all monies estimated to come into said fund from any and all sources and unappropriated for any other purpose during the Project Period, the sum of $62,500.00 is appropriated in Fund 2220 General Government Grants in Object Class 01 Personnel per the account codes in the attachment to this ordinance. This appropriation is effective upon receipt of the fully executed agreement.
SECTION 3. That the monies in the foregoing Section 2 shall be paid upon the order of the Director of Public Safety, and that no order shall be drawn or money paid except by voucher, the form of which shall be approved by the City Auditor.
SECTION 4. That at the end of the grant period, any repayment of unencumbered balances required by the grantor is hereby authorized and any unused City match monies may be transferred back to the City fund from which they originated in accordance with all applicable grant agreements.
SECTION 5. That the funds necessary to carry out the purpose of this ordinance are hereby deemed appropriated.
SECTION 6. That for reasons stated in the preamble hereto, which is hereby made a part hereof, this ordinance is hereby declared to be an emergency measure and shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage and approval by the Mayor or ten days after passage if the Mayor neither approves nor vetoes the same.