News Photo by Julie Goldberg The Montmorency County Board of Commissioners took another step in the opioid litigation during Wednesday’s meeting.

ATLANTA — In the next couple of weeks, attorney Tim Smith and lawyers from Smith & Johnson of Traverse City will meet with Montmorency County departments regarding the opioid litigation, board Chair Daryl Peterson said during Wednesday’s meeting.

Peterson received a letter from Smith that stated in the next couple of weeks, lawyers from Smith’s office will be going to five departments to collect information that could be used with the opioid litigation.

Peterson said if the board gets anything from Smith before the lawyers arrive, Secretary Linda Uchwal will pass it on to the five departments.

“Basically, they’re going to start asking for information and ask for costs involved in the opioid litigation,” Peterson said. “We got a 150 page document from the lawyers the other day indicating all the companies and all the accusations in the litigation.”

Peterson said notice will be given to the departments about when Smith and the lawyers will be meeting with the departments as soon as he knows.

“It sounds like it’s going to be pretty quick,” he said. “I just wanted to let everyone know that this is still an ongoing thing and we’re going to go full steam ahead here and it looks pretty quick.”

The board also is going to post for bids for the roof of the annex building and the front deck of the courthouse for repairs that are going to be needed this summer.

“We have the specs and we’re hoping we don’t have a huge cost but we’ll find out,” Peterson said. “I got a feeling we won’t have too many bids on it for the deck, but we should for the roof.”

The specs for the bids will be posted and the bids are due by May 9.

“We’ll see what we can come up with before the May meeting,” Peterson said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached via email at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5688.