Berks County Aug. 13: $1.9M in food, court-system delay

The Berks County Board of Commissioners meets Thursday, August 13, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. at the Berks County Services Center, 633 Court Street, Reading, with a Microsoft Teams option to watch and comment from home. The agenda's biggest single item is about $1.9 million a year to feed people in county care. A smaller set of items keeps paying for the delayed replacement of the county's civil court records system.

$1.9 million to feed county facilities

A resolution (240.2026) awards four one-year contracts to supply food to the county jail, the Parks and Recreation Department, Berks Heim (the county-run nursing home), and the shelter-care program at the county Youth Center. Together the four run about $1.9 million a year:

• Foods Galore, Inc. (Westampton, New Jersey): $1,672,516.96
• Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc.: $206,507.47
• Clover Farms Dairy, LLC (Reading): $45,016.98
• Hershey Creamery Co. (Harrisburg): $17,673.28

The bidders must hold their unit prices firm for three months, after which prices can be reset each quarter within a cap. The county can renew the contracts for up to two more years.

Spending on a delayed court-records system

Berks County's online civil court docket search, where you look up lawsuits, divorce filings, judgments, and property liens, has been down since the middle of June. The Prothonotary's office is replacing the crashed in-house system with a cloud platform, and the launch has slipped several times, most recently to mid-September. The background is in our report on the civil court records outage.

Two items on Thursday's agenda put county money into that project:

• The budget resolution (239.2026) moves $13,000 out of contingency into the Prothonotary's professional-fees account. The county's own explanation in the budget packet: the transfer covers "higher than anticipated project management and advisory services due to extended go live date."
• The contract list includes an amendment that extends the schedule of the county's agreement with a project-management consultant, Sage 497 Consulting LLC, on the office's new system, which the agenda lists as the CourtPro Cloud Case Management System. The amendment runs until the project is finished, at a cost not to exceed $91,000, paid entirely by the county.

When the Prothonotary announced the switch this summer, Jonathan Del Collo said moving to a cloud vendor was not expected to cost the office extra, because the e-filing fees that used to maintain the old system would instead pay the vendor. Our report identified that software vendor as Paperless Solutions. The two items on Thursday's agenda are a separate contingency transfer and a project-management contract, both tied to the project's longer timeline.

The rest of the budget resolution

Beyond the court-system transfer, resolution 239.2026 authorizes $107,133 in budget transfers and $305,437 in new appropriations. The larger pieces:

• $226,221 in leftover 2025 COVID Community Support money to cover final payments on the county morgue project, which the packet says were not made until 2026.
• $50,133 from the general fund to buy a Parks Department vehicle.
• Four state grants for the county's adult treatment courts, one each for drug, DUI, mental health, and veterans. A treatment court steers a defendant with addiction or mental illness into supervision and services instead of a standard sentence.
• $1,918 in federal forfeiture funds for the District Attorney's Blue Envelope Program, which helps drivers with autism during traffic stops, and a school-safety reporting platform.

Jobs, a grant, and an appointment

• Resolution 241.2026 fills two jobs and makes one promotion: a law clerk in Court Administration at $67,813, replacing a retiree, and a senior financial analyst in Budget and Finance at $86,000, replacing an employee who was promoted, plus the promotion of a caseworker supervisor to a quality-improvement manager in Children and Youth Services at $88,000.
• Resolution 242.2026 lets the county apply for a state grant to help pay the director of the Children's Alliance Center, the county's child-advocacy center for young abuse victims.
• Resolution 243.2026 appoints George Stuck III of Alloy Fabrications to the county Workforce Development Board in a small-business seat, filling a term that ends June 30, 2027.
• The rest of the meeting is routine: a contract list made up mostly of Children and Youth placement agreements, homeless-assistance oversight, and information-technology contracts; the weekly run of payments; and approval of the August 6 minutes.

How to attend or comment

• In person: Berks County Services Center, 633 Court Street, Reading. Doors open before 10 a.m.
• Online: a Teams link is posted with the agenda on the county meetings page.
• Comment rules: give your first name, last name, and municipality; one comment per person; online comments go through the Teams Q&A and are read aloud; the whole comment period is capped at 30 minutes, with in-person speakers first.

New to this? See how to speak at a commissioners meeting, and for what the county runs versus the state and your township, how Berks County government works. A recap will follow once the county posts the meeting video or minutes. The next board meeting is Thursday, August 20.