By Jack Chavez
(May 20, 2021) A year after the Worcester County Commissioners narrowly approved a grant for Atlantic General Hospital, county funding for FY22 looks like it will make the cut again.
The commissioners voted 6-0 on May 11 to give AGH the same $100,000 they gave the hospital last year. But that vote came after a 3-3 split on whether to completely zero out the hospital’s annual award in the county’s new budget. Commissioner Bud Church was absent for each vote.
“This is a hotspot for this commission and we might (ultimately) zero it out,” Commissioner President Joe Mitrecic said. “As the president, I’m just bringing to the forefront that this is a very big hot spot for the commissioners.
If the commissioners don’t bring the matter up again when all seven of them are present, the $100,000 grant will make it onto the FY22 operating budget proposal.
Church voted for the $100,000 last year and it’s presumed he would vote the same way this year, making it unlikely that the issue will be discussed further this year, Commissioner Josh Nordstrom said.
While $100,000 is better than no funding, it’s well short of the $200,000 that the hospital requested. Commissioners Jim Bunting, Ted Elder and Chip Bertino supported completely eliminating the hospital from the county budget.
Echoing his words last year when he strongly defended funding for AGH Nordstrom, stated that he “completely disagreed” with not only denying twice the funding but erasing it from the budget altogether.
“I understand we got (caught up in this) last year and it’s twice as much that they asked for last year,” Nordstrom said. “I just think we should keep it level like we did last year.”
Nordstrom stressed that it is imperative to keep the hospital’s funding up while the covid-19 pandemic is still present.
Initially last year, the commissioners narrowly passed a motion to issue AGH no funding. But when the overall operating budget failed to pass, the issue was reopened and a new motion was put on the table to give the hospital $100,000.
Mitrecic, who had voted in favor of zeroing out AGH’s budget last year, flipped his vote to give the hospital its funding.
AGH’s funding in FY20, pre-pandemic, was $175,000.