Nassau County task force splits $98,048.58 opioid settlement funds between sheriff equipment and fire-responder mental-health services

The Nassau County Opioid Settlement Task Force voted July 10 to split $98,048.58 in available opioid-settlement funds evenly between sheriff's office equipment and a fire-responder mental-health program.

Marshall (staff member) told the task force that after prior allocations the county has $98,048.58 on hand and that the sheriff's office had proposed purchasing four Apex Raman chemical-identification spectrometers at a quoted total of $97,009.21. Marshall said the sheriff's request could be met by dedicating a portion of the current balance to buy one or more units and testing them in the field.

The vote follows a period of discussion about how to use the remaining settlement dollars to support first responders. Chief Roland (Fire Chief) argued for using half of the funds as "seed money" for a fire- and EMS-specific mental-health program, including assessments, training and peer-support expansion. "There's such a big push for mental health for the firefighter side right now that I like to see for us take the remaining portion we don't allocate and use that as seed money for some fire specific fire EMS specific responder type mental health," Chief Roland said.

Marshall described the $50,000 mental-health line as a professional-services contract that could be directly procured because the amount would be under $100,000. "So it would be a professional services contract. So from the competitive standpoint of procurement, we can direct contract, plus it's under a $100,000," Marshall said. He also said staff had interviewed several firms and was looking for providers with experience working with the local first-responder population.

Speakers discussed evidence-based models and local examples. A task-force speaker pointed to Mental Health First Aid as an evidence-based curriculum with modules for law enforcement and EMS, and noted a Jacksonville-based provider and a program called SHIELD as examples used elsewhere. Deborah (county staff) said the Apex Raman unit under consideration is newer and "the database for the drugs is significantly better, more robust. It's able to read through plastic, which some of the other ones are not." She said the vendor includes training with the device.

Board members pressed for operational context, such as call volumes and how often field personnel would use the spectrometers. Marshall said he did not have detailed call-volume statistics at the meeting. Committee members also discussed long-term budgeting should the spectrometer prove useful, suggesting the county could later equip the HAZMAT team or include the devices in future budgets.

A motion to split the available funds 50% to fire/EMS mental-health services and 50% to the sheriff's proposal was made by Dr. Pagel and seconded by Alyssa Myatt. The motion passed by voice vote; all six members present responded "aye." Board member Knight was absent. The task force did not record individual roll-call votes.

Next steps discussed by staff include completing procurement and contract documents, designating a sheriff's department representative in place of Sergeant Knight, and bringing updates on deployments and program implementation back to the task force. Marshall said new contracts will be executed and the group will reconvene to review results; the next scheduled meeting is Aug. 14 but staff said it is likely there will be no substantive agenda for that date.

The decision documents the task force's use of settlement funds for a mix of immediate equipment and startup mental-health services for first responders. The group also discussed other previously funded items (video laryngoscopes and an ambulance remount procurement) and noted those items remain in deployment or procurement stages.