Council Member Gary Petrowski said Tuesday he will introduce a budget amendment guaranteeing multi-year funding for addiction treatment programs, arguing the city cannot let a second outreach van and other recovery services remain dependent on year-to-year appropriations while overdose deaths are finally trending downward.
Petrowski, who represents Cedar Hollow, a district hit especially hard by the opioid epidemic, said his proposed amendment would dedicate a recurring line item in the city budget to addiction treatment and recovery services rather than relying on the current patchwork of one-time grants and mid-year appropriations. “Every year, we treat this funding like a surprise expense instead of a promise we’ve already made to families in my district,” Petrowski said. “I want it in the base budget, not the deficit column.”
The push comes as Wentworth County has reported overdose deaths falling for a third straight year, down to 61 from a peak of 118 three years ago, a decline county officials have credited to expanded capacity at Wayfinder Recovery Services, a county outreach van program and Bellwater General Health System’s behavioral-health expansion. Petrowski said the progress is real but fragile. “You don’t get to declare victory and then cut the thing that’s working,” he said. “That’s exactly the mistake this city made after the last opioid funding surge dried up.”
A second van still waiting
Donna Wysocki, executive director of Wayfinder Recovery Services, said the clearest example of the funding gap Petrowski is trying to close is a second outreach van, proposed months ago to extend the county’s street-level engagement program into parts of Cedar Hollow and Riverside Heights the current van cannot reach on its existing schedule. “We know the model works. We have the data,” Wysocki said. “What we don’t have is a second vehicle, because nobody has found the money, and every month that goes by is a month someone doesn’t get reached in time.”
Dr. Kwame Asare, director of the Wentworth County Department of Health, said the county has identified the second van as its top near-term priority but lacks the funding on its own. “The county can run the program. We can’t fully fund the expansion of it without the city’s help,” Asare said. “Council Member Petrowski’s proposal would solve a problem we’ve been flagging for a while.”
We’re in the middle of one of the only genuinely good news stories this city has had in years, and I’ve watched good news stories about Cedar Hollow evaporate before because nobody made the funding permanent. I’m not going to let that happen to this one.
Gary Petrowski, City Council Member, District 4 (Cedar Hollow)
Where the money would come from
Petrowski said he intends to argue that at least a portion of the roughly $11 million in additional tax revenue projected from Foundry Row’s biotech expansion should be directed toward recurring treatment funding rather than one-time projects. “I don’t begrudge Foundry Row its success,” he said. “I just think a city that’s benefiting from one neighborhood’s economic boom owes something durable to the neighborhood still recovering from the crisis that came before it.”
City Manager Marcus Whitfield said his office would model several funding scenarios for the council, including options that would phase in a multi-year commitment rather than fully fund it in a single budget cycle. “A recurring commitment has to survive future budget years, including leaner ones,” Whitfield said. “We want to make sure whatever the council approves is actually sustainable, not something that gets quietly cut the first time revenue dips.”
Council Member Aisha Muhammad said she supported the concept but wanted assurances the funding wouldn’t compete directly with housing and transit priorities in her own district. Council Member Terrence Boudreaux, whose Lowertown district has also been heavily affected by addiction and incarceration, said he would co-sponsor the amendment. “Cedar Hollow and Lowertown have carried this crisis for two decades without a guaranteed budget line,” Boudreaux said. “It’s long past time.”
Council President Walter Kowalczyk said he wanted to see the amendment’s specific dollar figure before committing to a position, noting that the council would also be weighing Petrowski’s request against other proposed uses for the same pool of biotech-driven revenue, including a Lowertown reinvestment fund and a downtown plaza renovation. “Every council member has a good use for this money,” Kowalczyk said. “Our job is to decide which of those good uses can actually wait a year and which ones can’t.”
Petrowski said he expects to formally introduce the amendment when the full budget comes before the council, and he plans to spend the coming weeks lining up votes. “I’ve learned not to assume support just because something is obviously the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m going to make the case to every single colleague, individually, before this comes to a vote.”