The Porter County Council agreed Tuesday to fund two endeavors to combat substance abuse, by approving funds for a new halfway house in Valparaiso and by allowing the county sheriff to send an officer to the prosecutor’s drug unit without cutting the number of patrol officers.

Pending the required legal notice, the council unanimously agreed to grant the Harold “Hal” Kelley Respite Foundation, Inc. one-time start-up funds of $458,665 to purchase and renovate a four-plex on Chicago Street. The funding will come from the county’s income tax revenues.

The new halfway house will serve as a transition for men recovering from addiction, some of whom will be participants in the Porter County Drug Court.

As they did at previous meetings, attorney Mitch Peters and Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent said the halfway house is an important step in the county’s efforts to fight substance abuse by giving those trying to recover from addiction a structured environment to make the transition from jail to a more normal life.

“It just seems to me a logical piece of the puzzle,” said council member Dan Whitten, D-at large.

Council member Michael Bucko, D-4th, agreed that it’s better to have people be productive members of society than to keep spending tax funds on incarceration. But he questioned if there could be some controls to limit halfway house residents to Porter County residents only; Jent said although not all halfway house residents will be from the county’s drug court, those who are must live in Porter County.

The second request dealing with drug funding didn’t pass as easily.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Lain requested approval to create a probationary patrol officer post at a $29,914 salary, in turn allowing him to move a first-class patrol officer to the prosecutor’s undercover drug unit.

The request prompted a lengthy discussion over the council’s decision more than a year ago to dedicate $250,000 in casino revenues to double the size of the drug unit, with the county sheriff and the cities of Valparaiso and Portage each sending one officer to the unit.

Lain said his department is so stretched that in order for him to devote one officer to the drug unit, he’d need to create another patrol position. “I can’t afford to take him off patrol,” Lain said.

Council President Robert Poparad, D-1st, protested that the county was “being held hostage.” He said he agreed with the county’s decision to reimburse Portage and Valparaiso for the costs of hiring an additional officer. But he said he did not believe that the casino fund would essentially reimburse the sheriff’s department for doing the same.

But Whitten said he can’t see how the council could reject the request, since the sheriff’s department already has a manpower shortage but the council still wants to beef up the drug unit. “Do we want them to send someone to the task force or not?” he asked.

Lain said that in order for his department to adequately provide public safety, he cannot cut the number of patrol officers.

Two separate budget requests were before the council. One dealing with adding a county officer to the prosecutor’s drug unit passed unanimously. But the second request, to add another patrol officer to the sheriff’s department, passed 5-2, with Poparad and Rita Stevenson, D-2nd, voting no, and Bucko, Whitten, Laura Blaney, D-at large, Karen Conover, R-3rd, and Sylvia Graham, D-at large, voting yes.

The council dealt with two other funding matters for the sheriff’s department. One was unanimous approval of $50,000 in overtime pay for patrol officers, with the funding to come from the sheriff civil fees. Conover noted that Lain tried to secure this overtime pay earlier from a different fund, and now has come up with an alternate plan without dipping into the county’s general fund.

The other budget matter dealt with an ongoing effort to deal with a jail fund that currently has a deficit of more than $139,000.

The jail fund in question comes from fees paid to Porter County for holding state and federal prisoners. But because of a jail overcrowding problem, the state reduced the number of inmates sent to Porter County, in turn cutting the fees. Lain said about $25,000 in fees is generated monthly in the fund, but that the fund pays out twice that each month in salaries and other expenses.

The council approved an additional appropriation from the general fund totaling $612,504 for food, salaries and benefits that ordinarily would be paid through the prisoner fees. The additional funding will be partially offset by the remainder in the fee-driven fund as well as by incoming fees.

But the additional appropriation will still eat up the bulk of the county’s remaining unappropriated funds for the rest of this year. The county began the year with $939,809 left to appropriate and so far this year approved $611,344 in the unbudgeted funds.

Posted 5/27/2009