Last week the St. Clair County Commission officially approved to sign onto its $14.8 million bond for the new St. Vincent’s St. Clair hospital.

The county received a 3.75 percent interest rate on the bond, with $10.8 million being paid back through St. Vincent’s ease of the property and $4 million being paid back on the sale of the current hospital property.

A road to wellness

Pell City’s federal grant money has been approved for the road that will lead into the new St. Vincent’s-St. Clair hospital. Therefore, the county will be handing over that portion of the land for the city to begin paving in the coming weeks.

Currently, the St. Clair Economic Development Council owns the road property. It will now be handed over to Pell City for the $400,000 in work to be done to install the road.

Monthly bills

The county paid $527,211 in monthly bills last week. It collected $902,573 in sales tax. The county board of education received $320,973 of those funds.

Flood plain alert

The county has sent out 6,500 letters alerting residents who may live within a flood plain zone. Being in the zones affect people’s property insurance. A telephone service was hired a few months ago to handle alerting residents as well.

County Engineer Dan Dahlke said that his office has received 325 calls as of last week in regards to the flood plain alert. Around 50 people have visited his office to view the map of the flood plains in the county, he said.

Residents are encouraged to call first before visiting the engineer’s office in Ashville, in order to accommodate people wanting to view the maps.

“This is something we’re dealing with and the more communication we have out there the better it is,” Commissioner Paul Manning said of the process.

Larger local match

The transportation department will be getting an extra $4,538 for its local match of funds handed down from the federal government.

The increased money is to cover insurance costs of the county’s growing public transportation program.

The total local match now sits at $91,152 for the next fiscal year.

County budget

The county administrator’s office has begun the process of budgeting for the next fiscal year, which begins in October.

Commission Chairman Stan Batemon said he had a “good meeting with some of the people involved” in the budgeting process. He said that he feels that by today the county will have some “good numbers” to begin the five-week long process of preparing the next budget.

Commissioner Paul Manning noted that the health insurance increase for county worker will likely cost the county an extra $80,000 next year, bringing the total to $680,000.

Chairman Batemon said that insurance is one of the “biggest things to maintain” for the county. Batemon said that offering a good insurance package is “one of the reasons we have a stable base of employees.”

Dominicker chicken roof

Chairman Batemon informed the construction firm renovating the courthouse in Ashville that they will have to re-do a portion of the roof shingles on the historic building.

“It looks awful,” Commissioner Jeff Brown of Ashville said.

“It looks like a Dominicker chicken,” Chairman Batemon added, referring to the checkered yard fowl’s feather pattern.