approve a measure<\/a> authorizing the district attorney\u2019s office, which has coordinated with the Lehigh Carbon Community College Foundation to create the Lehigh County District Attorney Career Pathway Scholarship Program.<\/p>\nThrough the program, the foundation will receive up to $150,000 from the DA\u2019s opioid settlement fund to provide educational resources and training for county residents who have experienced personal hardships and\/or incarceration resulting from opioid use, including access to GED, ESL, certificate and degree programs, to help participants obtain meaningful employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrograms like these work,\u201d said board of commissioners Vice Chair Sheila Alvarado, who ran the meeting following Chair Geoff Brace\u2019s departure for a family commitment.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Sarah Fevig said the scholarship program could be a template for future endeavors. She said the program can be piloted, thus providing an opportunity through which the effectiveness of such measures can be evaluated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very key program to look at in this light,\u201d Fevig said.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin P. Holihan said the program allows for the county to start small and without public money, and called it \u201can experiment in something that really has no downside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaker Luis Perez with ReciproCITY discussed the impact of similar programs. Perez said he was first incarcerated at age 10 and had a life of crime laid out before him.<\/p>\n
ReciproCITY is an Allentown-based nonprofit organization that provides reentry support, workforce development and mentorship for individuals impacted by incarceration. The organization works to connect participants with employment opportunities, education and community resources to support successful reintegration.<\/p>\n
Perez said he was grateful for interactions with the DA\u2019s office and Community Action Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for them, I don\u2019t know where I\u2019d be today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s office is a participant in the multimillion-dollar opioid settlement with opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers, and has received more than $1 million to date to support efforts to treat, prevent and respond to the opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n
Overtime bonuses<\/p>\n
Also Wednesday, the commissioners approved extensions of temporary discretionary overtime bonus programs for employees in the county\u2019s 911 Communication Center and Department of Corrections through Aug. 14. The programs provide eligible employees with an additional $5 per hour for overtime shifts when staffing shortages create operational needs, with 911 employees eligible for up to $10 per hour during major holidays, severe weather or emergency events.<\/p>\n
County officials said the incentives are intended to maintain required staffing levels, reduce reliance on emergency staffing measures and support employee morale amid ongoing workforce shortages.<\/p>\n
In a familiar refrain, Commissioner Zach Cole-Borghi lent his support to employees in both areas.<\/p>\n
\u201c(These) temporary discretionary bonuses have been going on for five or six years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey deserve more money,\u201d Cole-Borghi said, and encouraged them to bargain together as a unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to get something more concrete in place that we can use as a recruiting tool,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Director of General Services Andrew Elliott said there were new workers in the pipeline, and when he\u2019s back before the body in August, he\u2019d hopefully be offering more good news.<\/p>\n
For his part, Commissioner Jon Irons said that the temporary bonuses were funded by money saved on unfilled positions and discussed recruitment and communication.<\/p>\n
Fevig said that due to the nature of how long the bonuses have been in place, they\u2019re now part of employees\u2019 \u201ceconomic reality.\u201d She said the effects of changing the nature of employees\u2019 salaries and their paychecks should be acknowledged, too.<\/p>\n
Support for LCCC renovations<\/p>\n
Commissioners also authorized a subgrant of up to $1 million to Lehigh Carbon Community College, using funds awarded through Pennsylvania\u2019s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program to support fa\u00e7ade and roof renovations at the college\u2019s Donley Center in Allentown. The grant was awarded to the county by the Commonwealth and will be passed through to the college to assist with improvements to the facility, according to county officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work is done, and it looks great,\u201d Brace said.<\/p>\n
Other business<\/p>\n
In other news, commissioners approved the following appointments: Valerie Hutton and Kate Huck to the Aging and Adult Services Advisory Council with terms expiring Dec. 31; Kevin Ian Baker was reappointed to the Lehigh County Authority with a term expiring Dec. 31, 2030; and Commissioner Antonio A. Pineda was reappointed to the Lehigh County Conservation District, with a term expiring Dec. 31.<\/p>\n
During public comment, Thomas Applebach, director of the Lehigh County Department of Veterans Affairs, discussed the \u201cBrush Up for Veterans\u201d program, meant to help honorably discharged veterans who are low-income, elderly or permanently disabled.<\/p>\n
Through the program, offered by the Veterans and Military Council of the Greater Lehigh County Chamber of Commerce, veterans and their spouses can get their homes painted by volunteers if they are physically or financially unable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday approved a series of measures, including the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,58118,58115,2495,58117,9579,58121,58114,2149,1816,58116,58119,40308,58120,58122,1222],"class_list":["post-123838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-antonio-a-pineda","tag-community-action-lehigh-valley","tag-district-attorneys-office","tag-donley-center","tag-geoff-brace","tag-kevin-ian-baker","tag-lehigh-carbon-community-college-foundation","tag-lehigh-county-board-of-commissioners","tag-lehigh-county-district-attorney","tag-luis-perez","tag-reciprocity","tag-sarah-fevig","tag-thomas-applebach","tag-veterans-and-military-council-of-the-greater-lehigh-county-chamber-of-commerce","tag-zach-cole-borghi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}