SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash — As the opioid crisis looms, the city of Spokane Valley is getting some financial help to deal with it, thanks to multiple opioid settlements.
Tuesday night, Spokane Valley City Council sat down to talk about what they could do with the money they've received from the opioid settlements.
According to the Spokane Regional Health District's opioid dashboard, 190 people died last year from opioid overdose. It's a number that grew 22% from the year before.
According to city documents, Spokane Valley could get $333,889 for the next 14 years to be put towards helping with opioid issues.
So far they've received $99,225.84, which is money that has to be used for opioid abatement.
While that seems like a decent amount of funds, deputy city manager Erik Lamb advised the council this was a relatively small amount of money.
"Consider looking at how we could potentially leverage funding for other existing funding towards projects to receive the most impact for our revenue," he said to the city council.
Some of the items discussed included enhancing the health district's opioid dashboard and expanding the Spokane Regional Crisis Stabilization Center.
"I guess I would prefer something going towards the root of the problem and education prevention so that we can impact future generations," Spokane Valley City Councilmember Jessica Yaeger said.
The council mostly agreed focusing on the stabilization center would be their best option. That included Mayor Pam Haley, who said they were limited by the amount of money.
"Some of these other programs sound like they'd be great, but we don't have the money to do it, When you're only given $20,000 a year, you not going to start a new program or something," said Mayor Haley.
One thing to note is that there is still litigation in the works, which city documents say could bring more money to Spokane Valley.
That amount was not included in the estimated total revenues talked about Tuesday night, meaning that number could change in the future.