‘Release’ eyed for RMH buildings

It’s not even close to being the ball game but efforts to reopen health care at the Richards Memorial Hospital campus may get to “first base” on Thursday.

That’s the day the Rockdale Hospital District expects buildings at that now-closed facility to be released back to the district from complex bankruptcy proceedings.

“The docketing (for that legal action) was done last Wednesday,” Dick Burns, hospital board chair, told The Reporter.

District directors have been negotiating with CHI-St Joseph’s to re-open some kind of clinic facilities at the campus, which was closed last December.

Burns said directors have also been talking to Health Point, a Brazos County based provider with several community clinics.

‘80 PERCENT’—Hospital board members are attempting to obtain a clinic and possibly an urgent care facility on the hospital campus, not to obtain another hospital.

Burns has visited the Rockdale City Council and Rockdale Municipal Development District asking those entities share sales tax collections to help ensure a “revenue stream” for a new health care system to open facilities at the campus.

The hospital district once collected a half-cent sales tax, and an ad valorem tax. It now collects neither. The half-cent sales tax which once went to health care now goes to the MDD, the result of elections in 2010.

“It’s unfortunate the (hospital) district does not have its half-cent sales tax as that would satisfy probably 80 percent of the need,” he said.

Burns pointed out the district still has ad valor-em taxing authority.”

“That’s why we were asking for cost sharing of the sales tax from the city and MDD, to minimize any ad valorem tax,” he said. “The district thinking was that the sales and use tax revenue comes from a broader based revenue area.”