The Leflore County Board of Supervisors used the website gotomeeting.com for the first time Monday afternoon in order to hold one of its regular sessions.
There were some blips and bumps. Those “attending” struggled to hear some of the supervisors and Joyce Chiles, the board’s attorney, in part because the audio was garbled.
There were static and a loud whine.
Something happened and suddenly the meeting ended, so it had to be resurrected.
There were folks who didn’t have a copy of the agenda, which in itself made the meeting hard to follow.
“I think it will be good after we get all the kinks out of it,” District 1 Supervisor Sam Abraham said afterward. “We are going to get this thing straight before the next meeting.”
The board did take action on a complaint from a previous meeting by Pafford EMS. Tony Abelo, Pafford’s Leflore County operations manager, told the board then that the service, new in the county starting April 1, was not receiving transfer business from health-care facilities, including Greenwood Leflore Hospital. The hospital frequently transfers patients to other hospitals, based on the patients’ medical needs.
The board voted 3-2 — with Abraham and District 3 Supervisor Anjuan Brown dissenting — in late February to enter into a two-year renewable contract with Pafford rather than MedStat, which has provided services in the county since 1997. The county will subsidize Pafford by almost $300,000 over the two-year period. It’s been moving forward with plans to be renovate the unoccupied former Co-op building on U.S. 82 for a headquarters that will include a mechanic’s shop, multiple offices and a classroom for training.
Meanwhile, the county had leased the former Mississippi Highway Patrol station across the highway to MedStat as its Leflore headquarters. Ambulances have been stationed there, and Abraham said as far as he knows, MedStat still is making the lease payments.
Several board members are unhappy. Board President Robert Collins, the supervisor for District 5, and Reginald Moore, the supervisor for District 2, have objected to having two ambulance services operating in the county.
At Monday’s meeting, Moore pressed the issue, explaining that the board thought the service it chose would be the one used and didn’t consider it good business for the hospital to pay for service that the county was subsidizing. He also mentioned a renewable contract between MedStat and the hospital that would stand if there was no change. But there was one, he said. “We changed the ambulance service. That is our prerogative.”
Then, the board voted 3-2 again, with Brown and Abraham voting no, to send a letter to the hospital’s board expressing the supervisors’ objections and sending a copy of the letter to the city of Greenwood.
Abraham said in the meeting, “I don’t know that we, as the Board of Supervisors, can stand in the way of a contract if we are not in it.” Moore, District 4 Supervisor Eric Mitchell and Collins didn’t buy the argument. The county and the city jointly own Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
•Contact Susan Montgomery at 581-7241 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com.
