T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshall County Attorney Jordan Gaffney, right, addresses the Board of Supervisors during Wednesday morning’s meeting while Emergency Management Coordinator Kim Elder, left, listens.

The Marshall County Board of Supervisors took several steps forward in the budgeting process and approved a resolution authorizing settlement agreements with Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, the producers and distributors of opioid drugs, as part of an ongoing nationwide lawsuit.

Board Chairman Jarret Heil summarized the lengthy resolution by sharing that it would allow County Attorney Jordan Gaffney to settle and release the claims against the aforementioned defendants. According to Gaffney, the county, to this point, has received $174,437.03 from the settlement and could still qualify for more money in the future, which must be put toward opioid prevention and rehabilitation programs.

Gaffney explained that the county has already signed on to a memorandum of understanding with regard to the larger opioid lawsuit, and the resolution in front of the board simply added more defendants. He then credited Maria Vargas-Gonzalez of the Auditor and Recorder’s office for her work setting up the financial side of the settlement.

“I do the talking. I do the writing, and Maria really does the hard work,” Gaffney said.

County Auditor/Recorder Nan Benson said she felt the settlement would allow the county to do good work and help people who have struggled with opioid addiction. Supervisor Carol Hibbs asked where the money goes locally, and Gaffney described some of the ways it has already been used.

“We can use these monies toward treatment activities if somebody has an opioid substance use disorder, scholarships and treatment programs,” Gaffney said. “We can use it towards prevention, so this would be just getting people in the know about ‘Hey, this stuff is habit forming, and it can lead to significant issues.'”

The money cannot, however, be used to pay salaries or add another drug task force investigator, and it must be geared specifically toward opioid abatement, not alcohol or any other drugs. Gaffney said the county looked at medicated assisted therapy for jail inmates in the past, but most of the inmates who would have benefited were released before they could be connected with the service.

“I made a note on my sheet here and it’s been in my calendar for a while that we need to get the group that we have together that kind of spitballs ideas and come up with some proposals to put more of these funds to use,” he said.

Hibbs then asked if local agencies like the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit of Central Iowa (SATUCI) were involved as partners, and Gaffney said SATUCI, Primary Health Care, Marshall County Public Health Director Pat Thompson, the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office, YSS, the Marshalltown Police Department and individual county officials have all been “at the table.”

Gaffney and Benson both noted that the amount of money they have already received far exceeded their original expectations. As the funds will continue to be disbursed for years to come, Gaffney said there was no hard timeline on when they must be spent, but the money will go back to the state pool at some point if it is not used in Marshall County.

“It sounds like if it’s gonna be longer term, then we need to have a good system in place and good partners that’ll be long-term partners,” Hibbs said.

She also asked Gaffney if he knew how much money the county would receive each year, but Gaffney responded that it would likely fluctuate and could depend on the demand for treatment and services each year. A motion to adopt the resolution carried by a unanimous vote.

Earlier in the meeting, the board held a brief public hearing on the property tax levy hearing for fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1, with no written or oral comments. A resolution to approve the FY24 maximum property tax dollar amount of $13,043,209 for general county services and $3,015,200 for rural county services carried unanimously. The general services number is an 8.93 percent increase from FY23, when the figure was $11,974,241.

As Benson explained, the county can always go down from the numbers as they are simply a “worst case scenario,” and she said the estimates have been balanced a second time due to changes in property tax calculation at the state level.

“We made some estimates earlier, so we will verify that everything still looks good. If there are any problems, we’ll start this process over again and do this again, but we made some estimates and we proceeded here,” she said. “It’s still good and in line with where we’ve been in prior years, but I’m hoping we can re-tweak things a bit.”

During the public comment period, County Buildings and Grounds Director Lucas Baedke reported that he had a courthouse construction meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and he predicted being able to meet “within the next week or so” to begin planning the transition back into the building.

In other business, the board:

• Approved the hiring of Kade Manship and Logan Millizer as jailers, both full-time at an hourly rate of $20.41, as part of the consent agenda.

• Approved status changes for Kiyoko Kieffer and Luke Hansen in the county attorney’s office, raising Kieffer’s salary to $81,478.88 and Hansen’s to $79,978.88.

• Set public hearings on the proposed 2022-2023 Marshall County Budget Amendment, the proposed 2022-2023 Marshall County decrease in appropriations and the 2023-2024 Marshall County budget for 9 a.m. on March 29 at the sheriff’s office meeting room.

• Approved a proposal for the annual county audit from Eide Bailey LLP of Des Moines at a cost of $60,000 for FY2023, $64,300 for FY2024 and $68,600 for FY25.

• Set special meetings for March 14 and March 21 at 9 a.m. to conduct the canvass of the upcoming GMG school district special election.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.