County commissioners: Heroin epidemic is hampering economic development
BELLE VERNON – The heroin epidemic is putting a strain on Westmoreland County’s budget, a commissioner there said Tuesday.
Seventy percent of the inmates who arrive at the county’s jail “are hooked on something,” and costs are up at other departments because of addiction, including the children’s bureau, which is seeing more foster children whose parents are addicts, said Gina Cerilli, chairwoman of the Westmoreland County commissioners.
“The coroner, we have to keep putting more money there because of overdoses,” Cerilli said during a panel discussion hosted in Rostraver Township by the Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce.
She joined Washington County Commission Chairman Larry Maggi and Fayette County Commissioner Vince Vicites in discussing topics ranging from tourism to economic development, something that also is hampered by the heroin problem.
“Until you get this under control, it’s going to get in the way of economic development,” Vicites said during the discussion at the Clarion Inn on Finley Road.
Jamie Protin, the chamber’s president and moderator of the panel, agreed the heroin problem is a huge challenge for revitalizing the region.
“The drug problem attacks everything the people in this room are trying to do,” Protin said.
Earlier, the conversation turned to blight, a problem that is especially bad in Monessen.
Cerilli said 50 percent of the blight in Westmoreland County is in the former steel town along the Monongahela River. Lou Mavrakis, the city’s mayor, has estimated Monessen is home to more than 400 blighted buildings.
Maggi said blight is a national concern.
“Blight is a problem that affects everyone, especially our downtowns of Donora and Charleroi,” Maggi said.
He said the county has established a land bank to “cut through liens and back taxes” in an attempt to put some blighted properties back on the market.
Meanwhile, Vicites said, Fayette has focused on blight in Brownsville, having spent $2 million in state funding to demolish six downtown properties, an initiative that has since attracted $350 million in new investments in that borough.