Published: November 18, 2009 11:40 pm      

Church leaders: Rejection won’t hinder project

LOUISA — A proposed addiction recovery program in Louisa will not qualify for a $500,000 community block grant after elected officials in the city, as well as Lawrence County, voted to show no support for the project.

Church leaders say the money would have been useful, but will not stop them from moving forward with plans to help local residents recover from drug and alcohol addictions.

“We are disappointed. We met with the mayor and the county attorney to let them know what this is and is not about,” said Tim Robinson, an elder at Community Fellowship and chairman for the Odyssey recovery program. “This was a moment for leadership. Instead of voting ‘No,’ the responsible thing would have been to take time out and not let 30 or 40 people in a room dictate what they do. This was a chance for them to acknowledge this is a huge problem in our community. Our kids are dying.”

With no vote of confidence from the city and the county, Robinson said the Odyssey program will not qualify for a half-million dollar grant from FIVCO, forcing supporters to take a different approach to the problem.

“That’s not going to keep us from moving forward. We will have to rent buildings instead of owning them,” Robinson said. “Public money or no public money, we are moving forward.”

Lawrence County residents who have publicly opposed the Odyssey program have criticized Robinson and Community Fellowship Pastor Rick May for not attending city council and county fiscal court meetings to discuss the proposal.

“Rick and I prayed it through and decided these meetings are people being driven by fear and misinformation,” Robinson said, emphasizing they have updated their Web site, odysseycenters.com, to address the community’s questions. May said their presence at those meetings would have caused only, “a hollering match and God is not pleased with that.”

Robinson and May said they have received a tremendous amount of encouragement from Christians, non-Christians, elected officials and former officials as well as residents throughout the region, despite the lack of support from within Lawrence County.

“The sentiment I’m hearing is just sadness,” May said, citing a conversation with a neighbor whose daughter has successfully battled an addiction issue. “It’s a cancer. It’s eating our community up from the inside.”

Like most people with concerns about drug and alcohol problems in the area, Robinson said his motivations are drawn from personal experience. In addition to working as a drug court prosecutor for more than three years, Robinson said he knows the problem from the other side of the issue.

“In my first year of law school at UK I lost my mom to lung cancer and I didn’t have faith. What I turned to to cope was whiskey. I was a functioning alcoholic for seven years and my life was total hell,” Robinson said, explaining he accepted Christ while sitting in the county attorney’s office and has been sober since. “The motive for me is I have walked in the shoes of every alcoholic and addict and I have lived through that hell. When Jesus came into my life there was a change. Today, I have a life because of that moment in time.”