Local woman petitions county to repeal old hospital millage

Local woman petitions county to repeal old hospital millage

Too late to place issue on November ballot

news@theeveningtimes.com

A Marion resident has turned in a petition to eliminate the tax on the old hospital, but voters will not get a chance to vote to repeal it during the upcoming election because the deadline has passed.

Anna Upton, who turned in the petition with 120 signatures to the county clerk’s office, said the county promised to eliminate the old tax when voters approved a new tax to build a new hospital, but failed to do so.

“They had promised the taxpayers that if the one cent tax passed in March that they would make sure it was on the ballot to remove the old millage because the tax was no longer needed,” Upton said. “They failed to do that and they need to honor the taxpayers and their word and take it off.”

County voters in March passed a measure to redirect a one cent sales tax to operate and build a new hospital which will be run by Baptist Memorial Healthcare.

The old tax, which is fourtenths of one mil, was enacted in the 1940s to support maintenance and operation of the former Crittenden Regional Hospital.

CRH went bankrupt and closed in 2014, but the county still owns the building and is still collecting the tax.

The tax brings in about $217,000 a year to the county.

Upton said residents are now essentially being double taxed.

“I feel like if they do not put it on the ballot or rescind it at Quorum Court and make it right for the taxpayers and honor their word, that they will have a taxpayer’s lawsuit,” Upton said. “The hospital is not there any longer. And we have been collecting this tax at $200,000 a year for the past two years without a hospital.”

But according to the law, there isn’t be enough time to get it on the ballot for this general election.

Crittenden County Election Commission Chairwoman Dixie Carlson said a special election can only be held not less than 70 days following the date of the adoption of a special election proclamation ordinance by the Quorum Court or from the date when the petition is filed with the county clerk.

“The timing is all wrong,” Carlson said. “There is no possible way to get this on the ballot. Everything has to be done in a timely manner. The ballots have already been printed.”

The issue may not need to go to the voters however.

County Judge Woody Wheeless said the Quorum Court plans to take the tax off the books in November when it votes to set the millage rates.

“We didn’t forget about it,” Wheeless said. “We’ve been researching the law and trying to make sure we were going the right avenue. There just wasn’t a clear definition of whether we could or couldn’t do it.”

Wheeless said the only reason the tax hasn’t already been taken off is because they were unclear about whether the tax was put in place through a vote of the people, or enacted by the Quorum Court.

If the tax was passed by the voters, it can only be taken off by a vote of the people in a special election, whereas if it was put in place by the Quorum Court, the court can vote to do away with it.

Wheeless said he has researched the topic back to 1946 and hasn’t found any reference in the records to show that the public voted the millage in.

“It looks to me, based on the minutes I have seen, that the Quorum Court itself voted the millage in,” Wheeless said. “So, if the Quorum Court voted that millage in, then the Quorum Court can vote it out.” Taxpayers should not expect to get any kind of refund though.

Wheeless said the money that has been collected from the old hospital tax has been used to maintain the building.

The county spent about $1.8 million to keep the building secure, insured, and the utilities on in the hope of landing a tenant.

The county has since leased the building to the Arkansas Department of Community Corrections as a treatment center for nonviolent

offenders, but still

owns the building.

Wheeless said the $200,000 that will come in when taxpayers pay their taxes on the 15th will be used to reimburse the county for those expenses.

“We are using that money to pay ourselves back for all the expenses we had,” Wheeless said. “But even with that, we are still almost $400,000 in the hole.

So even getting that millage money won’t get us to the even point. That money will get us pretty close to breaking even.”

Wheeless said they believe they are on solid legal ground to have the Quorum Court rescind the tax in November.

“The lawyers that have been helping us down in Little Rock seem to think we are okay,” Wheeless said. “When the millage comes up, we will just vote against it.”

By Mark Randall