Carbon County will soon begin a specialty court aimed at helping veterans.

The county commissioners approved the execution of a one-year $100,000 Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency grant Thursday to establish a veterans court that will divert eligible veterans from incarceration and into appropriate treatment programs.Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said the county initially applied for $92,501 in May for the new court, but the state had additional available funds and was able to increase the request.The county and courts will now work on hiring an additional probation officer to handle the cases, and the courts are finalizing details on how the court will operate.Gregory Armstrong, the incoming district court administrator, said that the courts are looking at a January start date for the new court, but the exact date will be determined by the judges.Commissioner William O’Gurek credited the courts for their preparation to date.He said some of the judges visited other counties to get an understanding about how to run a veterans court before the grant was awarded.Nothstein said the county will also be looking for veteran mentors who had served in combat to help the men and women in the specialty court because they could understand the problems those people are facing from their time in combat.Specialty courts like veterans court target specific offenders rather than the whole population and work with treatment programs to provide offenders instead of sentencing them to prison.Veterans court is a voluntary program for veterans moving through the court system that gives them an alternative to incarceration and secure treatment for their drug and alcohol abuse or mental health disorder.Its main objective is to help veterans return to society.Nothstein said in May that the county has about 103 veterans in the court system and some may qualify for placement in treatment programs.The new court will help identify veterans suffering from a problem and get them the help they need, and as a result, keep them out of the prison, which in turn would help cut down on overcrowding.In a related matter, the commissioners criticized the time frames of approved grants because the state’s fiscal year runs from July 1.Grants awarded after that, like the PCCD grant for the veterans court, which are good for only one year, still have a start date of July 1, meaning counties receiving grant money in October only have nine months to spend the funds or risk losing the money.Nothstein said he would like to see the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania put a resolution together urging for legislation that states the grant period for awarded grants would not start until a county is notified, rather than the beginning of the fiscal year.He cited the budget stalemate as a good example of hurting counties because grant periods for one-year grants were cut down to two or three months as a result of the stalemate. That forced counties to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few months or lose it at the end of June.O’Gurek said this happens frequently, citing the Lansford Elks building demolition project as an example.The county and borough have all requirements done for the Community Development Block Grant project but are still waiting on the funds from the state that was earmarked for Carbon County.