Sisters of Charity Hospital on Main Street. Photo: Adam Smith-Perez.

The City of Buffalo is starting to course correct its spending of millions of opioid-fighting dollars. 

Previously, the city squandered thousands of dollars earmarked to combat opioid addiction on lawnmowers for block clubs, speakers for a fireboat, and new lights and sirens for a police vehicle. Hundreds of thousands more were spent on law enforcement equipment unrelated to addiction. The city also gave $500,000 to Save the Michaels to renovate and staff a facility for women leaving inpatient treatment, but it never opened. 

For the first time in two years, the city now says it will use the money to provide counseling and improve care for addicts.

Mayor Sean Ryan’s administration will commit nearly $200,000 — a small percentage of the remaining $4 million in opioid-fighting money — to Catholic Health and Evergreen Health Services, with most of that money funding a counseling program.

Opioid settlement funds are a once-in-a-lifetime pool of millions of dollars meant to help communities recover from opioid addiction. Most of the funds in New York are administered by the Office of Addiction Services and Supports.

Here’s a breakdown of where the dollars will go: 

• $132,127 will fund a counseling program at the Sisters of Charity Hospital on Main Street. Evergreen Health will partner with Catholic Health to hire one or more recovery coaches — an individual who has been through addiction treatment and recovery themselves — to help direct clients to counseling and treatment.
• $55,705 will go to upgrading equipment and the electronic health records system at Catholic Health’s methadone clinic on Holden Street in the East Side. 

“I’ll call this Catholic initiative kind of a gold standard idea of a really smart way to use the money, [putting it] in the hands of folks that are on the front lines,” said Deputy Mayor Ben Swanekamp, who oversees the city’s finance department. “We’ll be looking for more opportunities to fund initiatives like this.”

Evergreen Health, a prominent local healthcare provider which has had a robust harm reduction program since the 1980s, will deploy a recovery team to the Sisters of Charity’s emergency department on days that opioid-related visits are highest. To start, the program will operate twice a week. 

A little less than a third of funds will pay for upgrades at the methadone clinic on Holden Street.