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Chesapeake council accepts $500,000 opioid‑abatement award to fund overdose prevention program
Summary
The Chesapeake City Council unanimously accepted and appropriated $500,000 from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority for an opioid overdose prevention program run by CIBH, with Council Member Ritter describing the funding as an extension of broader opioid settlement awards and urging interdepartmental coordination.
The Chesapeake City Council on July 27 voted 8-0 to accept and appropriate $500,000 from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority to the Operation Stop Grant, a program requested by Chesapeake Integrated Behavioral Health (CIBH) aimed at establishing local opioid overdose prevention efforts.
Council Member Ritter, who said she serves on the statewide Opioid Abatement Authority, described the award as part of a larger pool of settlement funds distributed across the state. "We have the lowest number of opioid deaths here in Chesapeake, but the highest percentage of rate change at almost 450% increase," Ritter said, urging the city to coordinate outreach to vulnerable communities and to meet the authority's accountability requirements.
The grant acceptance follows related council actions to authorize a memorandum of agreement supporting behavioral‑health programming, including the Harbor Hope Center Recovery High School. Ritter requested a coordination meeting in early August with city staff and public‑safety leaders to align the program with existing crisis‑hospitalization and recovery efforts, and emphasized that the Opioid Abatement Authority's funds are settlement proceeds that cannot supplant existing budget lines.
City Manager Price presented the appropriation and the council moved and adopted the request by an 8-0 vote. The council did not attach additional conditions in the motion; staff will follow the Opioid Abatement Authority's parameters for allowable uses and report back to council as projects are developed.
The next procedural step is implementation planning and cross‑department meetings to define outreach, reporting and allowable expenditures under the OAA award. No timeline for program rollout was specified in the meeting record.
