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Drew County will not seek special election on hospital tax

By Patty Wooten/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Wednesday, December 20, 2006 8:50 AM CST

MONTICELLO — Drew Memorial Hospital’s proposal to refer to Drew County voters a 25-year, three-quarter-cent sales tax to fund a $21 million hospital expansion failed Monday night when the Drew County Quorum Court denied the hospital board’s request to call a special election.

Voting 5-2, with two abstentions, the court approved Justice of the Peace Danny Lloyd’s motion to deny the request to place the sales tax question on the ballot of a special election in March.

Justices of the Peace Tommy Gray, Jimmy Potter, John Thompson, Kenneth Trotter and Lloyd all voted to deny the request while justices Carole Bulloch and Gay Griffith voted against Lloyd’s motion. Justices Larkin Brown and Louis Dunlap abstained.

Bulloch, Griffith, Dunlap and Brown wanted to table the hospital’s request until the court’s January meeting but Bulloch’s motion to do so failed 5-4, with County Judge Damon Lampkin casting the tie-breaking vote after Thompson abstained.

Hospital expansion proponents said the proposed tax, had it been approved, would allow the county-owned, 49-bed, acute care hospital to become a regional health care facility, increasing the hospital’s annual revenue by more than $1 million, but it never received the full support of the Drew Memorial Hospital Board of Directors.

Jim Searcy, one of two hospital board members voting against a motion last week to refer the issue to the quorum court, questioned the need for the tax if the hospital can generate an additional $1 million in revenue from the expansion.

“If we can actually generate that we don’t need a tax, we can pay for it out of cash flow,” Searcy said.

Mike Ward, who cast the other dissenting vote at last week’s hospital board meeting, questioned the need for an election as early as March.

Drew Memorial Hospital Board Chairman Gary Shrum told the board other issues will be coming up later in the year and “different people” suggested the March date so it won’t conflict with those issues.

He declined to identify the individuals or issues. However, Lampkin, the county judge, said the city’s 1-cent sales tax is up for renewal in September and the county’s one-cent road tax will be up for renewal later in the year.

Shrum, Drew Memorial Hospital Chief Executive Officer Richard Goddard, and about a dozen hospital employees, primarily department heads, attended Monday night’s quorum court meeting. Wilmar Mayor Curley Jackson, Monticello Mayor-elect Joe Rogers, Drew County Justice-elect Ron Echols, Monticello Economic Development Commission President Bennie Ryburn III, and State Rep. Allen Maxwell, D-Monticello, also attended, according to the list of attendees included in the minutes of the meeting.

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