The Leflore County Board of Supervisors has decided to send another invitation to the Greenwood Leflore Hospital Board to meet and discuss the state of the publicly owned hospital.
The vote Monday to seek the meeting was 3-2, with District 3’s Anjuan Brown and District 1’s Sam Abraham dissenting. The date of the proposed new meeting was not specified.
The Board of Supervisors had tried to get the hospital board and CEO Jason Studley to meet with the supervisors on May 10 at the county courthouse, but hospital officials instead set up their own meeting for the same date and time at the hospital, to which both the county supervisors and the Greenwood City Council were invited. Studley later explained that the hospital board did not want to meet with one group of owners without the other present. The hospital is jointly owned by the city and county.
Abraham and Brown attended the closed-door meeting at the hospital, as did four members of the City Council.
Three county supervisors — board President Robert Collins, District 2’s Reginald Moore and District 4’s Eric Mitchell — and Greenwood Councilwoman Dorothy Glenn were left waiting at the courthouse.
Mitchell said Monday he felt the supervisors had been treated “unfairly.”
Brown said he heard there was going to be a meeting at the hospital, so he stopped by there first. Abraham said he was under the impression that the meeting would be at the hospital as well.
Mitchell said, “I think as a board, we’re letting a board that we put in place, that controls something that we own, act a little too aggressively on us.”
Abraham disagreed.
“My question is to y’all as grown men on this board: Is it worth losing the hospital to show that you’ve got a little authority?” Abraham asked. He said he is worried about how the hospital is going to sustain itself, and he is less concerned about where meetings with the hospital board take place.
The hospital has been losing millions of dollars annually for several years, and the situation has been compounded by the difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration at the hospital has warned that it is running out of cash reserves and has implemented several emergency measures recently. It began last week laying off 30 employees, including an undisclosed number of physicians.
Mitchell maintained that the hospital board should have appeared before the supervisors on May 10 as a matter of respect.
Collins and Moore both argued that a meeting before the supervisors was a matter of transparency and that the hospital board needed to answer questions about the hospital’s financial situation.
Brief arguments between Abraham and Mitchell, and then Abraham and Collins, took place over the matter, though neither became heated.
In other business:
-The Leflore County Sheriff’s Department is dealing with staffing issues, similar to other government bodies in the city and county.
Undersheriff Ken Spencer said the office has lost several deputies to retirement and others are moving on to better-paying jobs.
The department has received applications for jobs. “We’ve got plenty of quantity,” Spencer said. “We just don’t have a whole lot of quality.”
The board agreed to look into the pay scale for deputies, with Moore specifically wanting to find out if deputies had received a pay raise across the board, in addition to raises based on rank.
- Capt. Jason McMullin of The Salvation Army in Greenwood announced that he and his wife, Keisha, will be moving to Laurel in June to take over The Salvation Army office in that town.
“We don’t have enough officers to keep up with what’s retiring,” he said.
The Salvation Army in Greenwood will not be going away, he said, noting that present staff, including Sgt. Shyan Hicks, are trained and have his full confidence in continuing the operation.
He also asked the board to consider allowing The Salvation Army to move its headquarters from the church at 209 N. Stone Ave. to the vacant building that formerly housed the Leflore County Community Work Center. The building in the Greenwood-Leflore Industrial Park is owned jointly by Leflore County and Greenwood. McMullin said he had met with Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams but had not made a formal proposal before the City Council.
The church, which is owned by The Salvation Army, has fallen victim to continued instances of vandalism, he said.
The board voted to table the issue, but no member objected to the proposal. McMullin said he would now need to inform his superiors of the proposed move.
- Bill Clay of the Greenwood Mentoring Group asked the board for more than $20,000 to provide a portion of the funding for the group’s summer enrichment program.
Clay discussed several of the group’s programs, such as life skills and meals.
“We see these kids each and every day,” he said. “A snack to you might be a meal to a child.”
The board approved giving the group $1,000, which was already earmarked in the county budget, and tabled Clay’s new request for further review.
- Contact Kevin Edwards at 662-581-7233 or kedwards-@gwcommonwealth.com.
