The Leflore County Board of Supervisors has agreed to pay an Indianapolis health-care consultant $45,000 more to help come up with a plan to keep Greenwood Leflore Hospital open.
The board voted 3-2 to authorize the expenditure Monday, three days after the University of Mississippi Medical Center announced it was no longer interested in taking over the financially troubled hospital, which is jointly owned by the county and Greenwood.
Reginald Moore of District 2, Eric Mitchell of District 4 and Robert Collins of District 5 voted in favor of continuing to retain Samuel Odle, a senior policy adviser with Bose Public Affairs Group. District 1’s Sam Abraham and District 3’s Anjuan Brown voted against the proposal.
“I don’t know anything about putting hospitals together,” said Collins, the board’s president. “This guy is an expert on it.”
The Board of Supervisors hired Odle in August to provide advice on the proposed long-term lease with UMMC. Now that the lease is off the table, it wants Odle’s help in formulating an alternative plan to stave off the hospital’s possible closure.
“Plan B is to make sure the hospital can make it over until the Legislature meets, and we’re hoping to have a plan put together by next week to present to everybody,” Collins said.
“It’s something we’ve got to go forward with until they’ve got a plan,” he said, referring to the hospital board.
The original contract with Odle allowed for spending up to $65,000 for his services, but the board had approved spending only $20,000 before Monday.
Both Brown and Abraham said they were not comfortable voting for the additional expenditure without a clear understanding of the terms of the
contract and its scope of services.
“I have no way to know what we’re even contracting for based on what I was given tonight,” Abraham said.
Betty Sanders, who is filling in as board attorney, said she had not reviewed the contract, which had been vetted previously by Joyce Chiles, who served as board attorney until her death in September.
Brown said, “I can’t vote intelligently until I’ve had a chance to read and digest (the contract), and I definitely want the attorney to look at it.”
Collins noted that the supervisors, a week before UMMC’s decision to end lease negotiations, had voted to spend an estimated $4.5 million to meet UMMC’s demands for the lease.
He said, “Forty-five thousand is a drop in the bucket. We were fixing to spend millions and not get anything. We’ve got to try to get everybody on board, but somebody’s got to have a plan, and I’m hoping this guy will steer us in the right way.”
During the meeting, Moore claimed that the state College Board, which oversees UMMC, had told the state-owned hospital that “they could not proceed with the lease.”
When pressed afterward for his source of information, Moore said he had read it somewhere but could not cite a source. He said to “strike” what he had said.
The board also heard from Marilyn Sims regarding the recent gun violence in Greenwood. “I’m asking the board to set up a time with city officials and the board at the Leflore County Civic Center to address this violence in the community,” she said.
There have been 18 homicides in Leflore County this year, including 16 that were firearm-related, according to reporting by the Commonwealth.
“This is not an issue we need to grandstand,” Abraham said. “We need to figure out what we can do to fix it.”
The board took no action, but Moore said after the meeting that he had spoken with Sims about the possibility of organizing a town hall meeting to discuss violence in the community.
In other business, the board approved:
- Spending $144,937 to match a grant in the same amount to renovate Sunflower Park. The county’s share will come either from its allocation of American Rescue Plan Act funds or from an amendment to the current budget.
- An interlocal agreement with Greenwood for the use of inmates from the recently created Joint State-County Work Program.
- Closing the courthouse at 1 p.m. Dec. 2 to observe the Delta Band Festival and Christmas Parade.
- Seeking bid proposals for 50 surveillance cameras to be installed throughout the county.
- Contact Katherine Parker at 662-581-7239 or kparker@gwcommonwealth.com.
