By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
The cash-strapped Escambia County Healthcare Authority (ECHA) will apparently shell out more than $100,000 to fund a special election that will decide whether voters will authorize a 4-mill property tax increase to help finance the county’s two struggling hospitals.
The results of a petition circulated for several weeks around the county more than justified the call for an election. During the most recent county commission meeting, it was revealed the petition received more than 3,000 signatures, twice the amount required to have the measure put on the ballot.
Commissioners then voted 3-2 to approve a special countywide election for September 23.
District 1’s Steven Dickey made the motion to greenlight the measure, District 4’s Brandon Smith seconded it, then Dickey, Smith and District 2’s Raymond Wiggins voted in favor of it. District 3’s Larry White and District 5’s Karean Reynolds voted against the ballot placement.
Healthcare officials told the commission that Atmore Community Hospital and D.W. McMillan Memorial Hospital in Brewton operate at a $6 million deficit. The tax, if approved, is expected to generate about $1.8 million per year.
White said his opposition to the “hospital tax” was based upon the authority’s failure to present commissioners with a business plan that was promised when the issue was first brought to the commission table.
“Since that time, we have asked for a business plan to show us how that $1.8 million will cover the deficit,” White said. “They have not provided to me or this commission a business plan on how this tax will help save county hospitals.”
Healthcare officials based their request — that the county allow them to ask voters to double the amount of healthcare tax they currently pay — on the provisions of a 1947 Attorney General Opinion that allows counties to levy up to an 8-mill tax to help fund public healthcare.
Authority officials announced in 2018 the immediate implementation of a plan that would lead to a new community hospital in Atmore within three years, but little has been said in recent months about the proposed new facility.
Atmore City Council members refused to give ECHCA municipal land at Rivercane on which to build the new medical center, but a deal was eventually struck under which Poarch Band of Creek Indians swapped 10 acres, just yards away from the initial hospital site, to the healthcare authority for the 10-acre tract on which ACH currently stands.
By law, ECHCA will have to pay for the election, and Probate Judge Doug Agerton told commissioners the special election would cost somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000.
Tax Collector Thad Moore Jr. said if the tax referendum is approved by voters, property owners wouldn’t notice the increase on their tax bills for about two years, since the 2025 tax bills have already been set.