Berks County approves $1.9M in food contracts

The Berks County Board of Commissioners met Thursday, August 13, 2026, and approved about $1.9 million a year in food contracts for county facilities along with more spending on the county's delayed court-records system. The board approved its agenda as a single block, the way it runs every meeting: five resolutions, a week's worth of contracts, and the weekly run of payments.

$1.9 million to feed county facilities

The board awarded 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 (resolution 240.2026). The four together run about $1.94 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 vendors must hold their unit prices firm for three months, after which prices can reset each quarter within a cap. The county can renew the contracts for up to two more years.

More money for the delayed court-records system

Berks County's online civil court docket search, where residents 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 the board approved Thursday put county money into that project:

• The budget resolution (239.2026) moved $13,000 out of contingency into the Prothonotary's professional-fees account. The county's written explanation: the transfer covers "higher than anticipated project management and advisory services due to extended go live date."
• The contract list included an amendment extending the county's agreement with a project-management consultant, Sage 497 Consulting LLC, on the office's new system, which the agenda names 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.

As we reported 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. Those two items are a separate contingency transfer and a project-management contract, both tied to the project's longer timeline. Thursday's agenda was previewed in our Aug. 13 board preview.

The rest of the budget resolution

Resolution 239.2026 authorized $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.

Contracts, jobs, and an appointment

The board also approved the week's contract list (dated August 10), the bulk of it per-day placement agreements with foster-care, group-home, and shelter providers that take county-referred children. The larger items on the list:

• A five-year agreement with Revize LLC to host and support the county's website, including software and security updates and around-the-clock monitoring, at a cost not to exceed $132,950.
• A one-year agreement, not to exceed $5,259,996, with the Council on Chemical Abuse, the county's designated agency for planning and running drug-and-alcohol prevention, treatment, and intervention services. The money is 40% state and 60% federal.
• Two state-funded agreements with the Berks County Redevelopment Authority to run the county's Homeless Assistance Program: $321,064 for oversight and $244,286 for rental assistance.
• A compensation study for the county workforce by RKL LLP, not to exceed $49,500.

The remaining resolutions filled jobs and a board seat:

• Resolution 241.2026 filled a law clerk post in Court Administration ($67,813) and a senior financial analyst post in Budget and Finance ($86,000), and promoted a caseworker supervisor to a quality-improvement manager in Children and Youth Services ($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 appointed 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.

How the vote worked

Berks commissioners approve their agenda as a single block rather than voting on each resolution separately. The meeting video shows the agenda read and approved, followed by reports from the Treasurer and Controller, commissioners' comments, and a public-comment period. The county had not posted written minutes of the August 13 meeting at publication, and we will update this recap if they show any change.

The next commissioners' board meeting is Thursday, August 20, at 10 a.m. at the Berks County Services Center, 633 Court Street, Reading. For how these meetings run and how to speak at one, see our guide, and for what the county controls versus the state and your township, see how Berks County government works.