Carbon County officials are trying to beef up their opioid treatment services within the prison through a continued partnership with an area drug and alcohol organization.

During the county commissioners’ meeting on Thursday, the board approved three motions regarding agreements with Carbon-Monroe-Pike Drug & Alcohol Commission.

The first two agreements provide drug and alcohol treatment services at the correctional facility for inmates who need services for drugs, alcohol or opioid use disorder. The two agreements cost a combined total of $149,950.

Eloise Ahner, county administrator, said that the agreements have been in place for several years, but the county updated some of the wording.

The third contract provides a treatment court coordinator to work in conjunction with the courts.

This is also a renewed contract but with amendments, including providing a breakdown of the clients within treatment court who have an opioid dependency issue and co-occurring substance abuse disorder/mental health conditions.

The cost for the year is $53,582 and will use opioid settlement dollars based on stipulations of the Attorney General’s Trust agreement from the opioid settlement.

Commissioners’ Chairman Mike Sofranko said that the commissioners sat down with President Judge Roger Nanovic to update the three contracts to best fit Carbon’s current practices.

“We worked back and forth with him on some of the changes he felt needed to be made and that we needed to change,” Sofranko said. “It was kind of like a group effort.”

District Attorney Michael Greek, in a letter to the commissioners on March 2, expressed his opposition to the revised contracts.

“I do not believe the revisions adequately spell out any specific duties regarding the opioid position or the appropriate mechanism to verify the hours and services provided to the county under either contract,” he wrote.

Sofranko, on Thursday, said that while not everyone is happy with the revisions, they needed to be done.

In other opioid settlement money news, Commissioner Rocky Ahner said that the county is looking at a plan to do something similar to neighboring Schuylkill County.

“We’ve been spending an awful lot of money on advertising and now we’re maybe changing the direction to try and get some kind of a rehab, a more intense rehab program at the prison,” he said, adding that right now, drug and alcohol staff use small rooms that are normally used for attorney-client meetings.

He hopes to look into the possibility of adding an addition specifically for treatment services at the prison.

“I think our direction is going that way so hopefully, that will help the county out and get people back on their feet,” Ahner said.

The next step is for the county to prepare and submit a proposal to the opiate trust to see if it would be an approved use for the county.

If it is approved, Ahner anticipates it would take at least a year until plans would begin moving forward on creating such an addition.