Why Should Delaware Care?
The city of Dover is one step closer to implementing a slew of opioid use remedies after a task force appointed by the mayor has finalized its list of recommended proposals. The city plans to use the first round of its 12 designated opioid settlement fund allotments to implement youth-focused initiatives.
An appointed group of Dover city leaders finalized a list of recommendations last week, proposing six ways the capital city could use its quarter-million-dollar share of the state’s opioid settlement commission funds, with a focus on youth outreach.
In response to pushback over Mayor Robin Christiansen’s controversial suggestions last fall for the city to use its share of the settlement funds to build a swimming pool, Christiansen created a “Blue Ribbon Opioid Use Disorder Task Force” to examine how the city could best allocate its first $250,000.
The recommendation the task force is prioritizing most strongly is a youth-focused campaign allowing kids to express their emotions and struggles with drug use through social media videos and live theater, said City Councilman Roy Sudler, who chairs the task force.
“We feel as though a unique way to grasp the attention of the youth and do outreach to the youth is through theater, arts, and Tik Tok,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
Sudler, who has a background in mental health and drug abuse research, said the task force is already working on a partnership to carry out the recommendation with the Capital School District – which includes the city of Dover – Delaware State University, and the Biggs Museum of American Art.
A spokesperson for the Capital School District confirmed the planned partnership in a message to Spotlight Delaware. Representatives from Delaware State University and the Biggs Museum did not respond to requests for comment.
At the same time, Sudler said, the city will work with the state’s Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission (POSDC) – which distributes money from legal settlements with drug manufacturers to municipalities and local organizations – to set up an online portal for other youth-focused organizations to apply for a portion of the city’s first funding allocation later this spring.
The other five recommendations include investing funds in a detox treatment center, expanding telehealth services for opioid users and standing up a mobile intervention unit to provide immediate referrals for drug users.
Sudler said Christiansen is “in total agreement” with the task force’s recommendations, but it will be up to the city council to approve them before the POSDC gives them final approval in late-March.
Christiansen did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment about the task force.
The POSDC will direct 15% of its total funding to 10 local jurisdictions – including Dover, Wilmington, Seaford and each of the state’s three counties – for the first time this spring, said POSDC Director Brad Owens.
The amount of money each jurisdiction will receive was determined based on a formula of population size, drug overdose deaths, and the number of admissions to substance use treatment facilities, Owens added.
A closer look at the recommendations
Sudler presented the same six recommendations at the first task force meeting in October 2025 that the group ultimately voted to approve this month.
He initially spent time researching the city’s opioid use environment and having conversations with community members before he first brought the ideas to the task force.
From there, he said, he gave the task force a chance to propose any amendments or other recommendations, but the group ended up agreeing with his original ideas.
When asked about the youth initiative at a Feb. 12 task force meeting, member Bernard Pratt, an employee at Delaware State University, said he was just “being a sponge” and absorbing what experts were presenting to the committee.
Other members, including community activist Chelle Paul, praised the youth recommendation as an effective way to address the problem early and reach the many struggling kids in the community.
To Tammy Anderson, a University of Delaware professor who studies drug use, the youth initiative is a good way of focusing on prevention, and reaching kids on the platforms they like to use, like Tik Tok.
“It’s worth investing in because so many young people are tuned into it,” she said. “That’s where you’ll capture them.”
Anderson also said she’d encourage the city to pursue the task force’s recommendations relating to detox center infrastructure and expanded behavioral health resources. However, she said she is “less enthusiastic about’ the ideas of more telehealth services and a mobile intervention unit, as they have been shown to have fewer results for decreasing drug use.
While Anderson highlighted the nuances of which recommendations might be more effective, Owens, the POSDC director, said the commission will allow Dover to pursue whichever recommendations the city council elects to focus on with the settlement money.
“It’s ultimately their discretion,” Owens said. “That’s the whole point to give locals some authority as to how they spend the money.”
Swimming in ideas
At a city council committee meeting in September 2025, Christiansen suggested the city “be creative” with its opioid settlement funding, and put money toward a proposed $20 million pool.
While Christiansen defended the idea in an interview with Spotlight Delaware in September, the suggestion drew a wide range of criticism from city council members, residents and other state officials.
Owens told Spotlight Delaware spending the money on a pool would be “a hard stretch.”
“I told the mayor to focus on initiatives that are more directly linked to opioid use,” Owens said.
In an effort to quiet concerns about his pool suggestion, Christiansen stood up the task force to create recommendations for how Dover could best use its first round of settlement funds.
The city will continue to receive $250,000 annually for the next 12 years from the POSDC.
The city of Dover’s first round of money comes on the heels of past controversies involving central Delaware nonprofits misusing opioid settlement funds.
Code Purple Kent County, a nonprofit that provides overnight homelessness services during the winter months, was investigated by the Delaware Department of Justice in the summer of 2024 for misusing the roughly $300,000 it received from the POSDC.
Karen Wilder, the former director of the Dover Interfaith Mission for Housing, which has men’s and women’s homeless shelters in Dover, was sentenced to prison in January for embezzling $700,000 of the organization’s funds, some of which came from the opioid money.
‘The healing process’
The task force’s final meeting on Feb. 12 included both discussion about the proposed youth-focused initiative and community member perspectives on the opioid use situation in Dover.
Cammerin Norwood, a community advocate who works in youth violence intervention, said at the meeting that he has found the best way to reach kids is by meeting them where they are.
“Kids won’t just come out and say things immediately,” Norwood, who founded a youth outreach program, said. “It’s just when they feel that the space is safe.”
Other attendees spoke to the group about their own struggles with addiction and feeling disenchanted as youth, and the types of outreach that helped push them into recovery.
According to data from the Delaware Department of Health and Human Services, the city of Dover recorded 34 suspected overdose deaths in 2024. That number was down from 44 deaths in 2023, and 40 in 2022.
The agency does not yet have numbers for 2025.
Sudler said it was important to him that the task force meetings be a part of the “healing process, the bonding and the village,” for Dover residents to come together and share experiences.
City Councilman Brian Lewis, who is not an official member of the task force but was present at the meeting, gave a similar speech about the need for more patience and leadership, especially at a time when the city government has become divided, he said.
“I think we need to sit back and listen,” Lewis said. “That’s one of the problems right now in this city with the leadership – they don’t listen.”
Since last fall, the Dover city government has become bitterly divided over discussions of an anti-panhandling ordinance, which have been drawn out over a series of months. Sudler and Lewis have been outspoken critics of the proposal, while Christiansen and City Council President Fred Neil stand in support.
Sudler said he believes the city council used to be open and welcoming with its meetings – like he said the task force has been – but the body is not like that now.
“I hope that city council can get to that point again, he added.