The Weber County Commission has been working with the Weber-Morgan Health Department during planning sessions to discuss making some of the funds available for prevention and treatment.

During Tuesday’s Weber County Commission meeting, Commissioners Gage Froerer and Jim Hardy (Commissioner Sharon Bolos wasn’t available) approved a motion to grant the health department $180,000 for those purposes over the next year.

Bryce Sherwood, Community Health Director at the Weber-Morgan Health Department, explained to the commissioners and the public what they intend to use the funds for.

“This is to help with opioid crisis and increase what currently doing, not supplant anything,” Sherwood said. “The efforts are to train local officials to have a basic understanding of the science behind opioid prevention, recovery and treatment. The funds will be used for collaboration between agencies, working with local law enforcement, schools and community members to mitigate opioid overdoses, which are fourth-highest in the state. We appreciate having these funds to continue these efforts.”

Froerer said that since the settlement was designed to provide funding for treatment and prevention, it’s natural that the health department be involved.

“The health department is in a great spot to use those funds,” Froerer said. “As a commission, we are united that these monies get spent in the right direction and that we have some results-based accountability at the end of the day. I think the health department has shown that they will be able to do that.”

In addition to that proposal, the commission also received an update on the primary election results in Ogden Valley from Lauren Shafer of the Weber County Elections Office.

She said the Ogden Valley has 4,895 registered voters with 60.94% turnout. 2,983 ballots were counted, while only 31 were rejected due to mistakes in the filing process. There were 16 provisional ballots cast with two being rejected because the voters didn’t complete the form.

Shafer said that 5,197 ballots were mailed and 3,014 ballots were cast. That meant that 2,182 were not returned with 166 being undeliverable.

She also presented the names of the candidates who made it through to the general election and the commission accepted the results of the primary.

Most of the rest of the meeting were procedural steps, including updating the county code to the new transient room tax rate of 4.5% after it was officially increased from 4.25% in June.

The Weber County Commission meets at the Weber Center every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Meetings are viewable online via the county’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@webercountyutah/. Meeting agendas, minutes and other information are available on the county’s website at https://www.webercountyutah.gov/County_Commission/.