NEWS

Health district bind sparks heated debate

Chris Balusik
Reporter

CHILLICOTHE - A plea to turn out in support of the Ross County Health District’s pending Monday appeal for help from the Ross County commissioners was the only concrete result of a District Advisory Council gathering Thursday that brought several heated arguments from its start.

According to the agenda for Monday’s county commission meeting, Health Commissioner Timothy Angel and health district Fiscal Officer Adam Dyer will appear in front of the commissioners at 2:30 p.m. to ask for any financial assistance the county can provide.

After November’s levy defeat, the district will lose all funding other than fees from any services it can find a way to maintain and any grant funding it can hold on to.

Board of Health member Gary Prater said the situation will likely result in the district having to close its doors should the county be unable to provide some funding to stretch operations as far as they can until the district can get a levy passed. Its next opportunity will be in the spring, but even if a levy is passed in 2017, the district would not see income from it until April of 2018.

“Absolutely, when we’re out of money (we'd have to close),” Prater said. “The problem is, we’ve got a lot of legacy costs. We’ve still got some money, but there’s legacy costs when you start looking at laying people off. You’ve got unemployment, you’ve got vacation time that has to be paid, so what we’ve got is going to be depleted pretty quick. It’s going to cut the months down we can run real quick. There’s no way we can get through until 2018.”

The DAC, a body established under the Ohio Revised Code, is made up of the president of the board of commissioners, the chief executive of “any municipal corporation not constituting a city health district” and the president of the board of trustees of each township. The board meets once a year to appoint its allocation of health district board members — the DAC has four appointments in Ross County — and to handle a few other duties.

Whether Thursday’s gathering called by DAC Chair James Hatfield could be considered a legitimate meeting was immediately called into question by Green Township Trustee Robert Wakefield, who said Hatfield did not have legal authority to call a meeting. Hatfield said he had the right to call the meeting, and the altercation escalated to a shouting match between the two that had Wakefield and Hatfield repeatedly trying to shout over each other and Hatfield yelling at Wakefield to sit down, at one point suggesting the sheriff be called.

Wakefield cited the Ohio Revised Code as the basis for his objection. The code says a special meeting of the DAC may only be called by the health commissioner, the board of health, or the "lesser of five or a majority of district advisory council members."

The exchange was the first of several involving attendees during the evening. When Hatfield called for a roll call vote of confidence or no confidence in the Board of Health, Wakefield objected on the basis of his feeling the meeting was not a legitimate one, and some of the township representatives chose not to cast a vote because they wanted to consult with their township board or with Prosecutor Matthew Schmidt. Five townships cast a no confidence vote, while four expressed their support for the health board.

Hatfield, who said he called the meeting to remind townships when they prepare their 2018 budgets for submission to consider the possibility they may have to find money to fund state-mandated health services, was critical of the decision-making of the Board of Health and Angel. His biggest criticisms came from the decision to wait to put a levy up until the last possible vote before the current levy expires; the decision to ask for 0.4 mills more than the current 1-mill levy; and health officials not building into their 2017 budget submission a provision for collecting from cities, villages and townships to pay for state-mandated services should a levy fail.

Some members of the DAC expressed their support for the Board of Health and the strength of the program that has been built under its leadership and that of Angel, and Board of Health members and several health district employees in attendance spoke to the importance of the work being done. While some admitted mistakes had been made in not taking a levy up earlier, all felt the immediate concern was to find a lifeboat for the organization until another attempt can be made to pass a levy.