Voters will head to the polls today to decide questions in special elections involving sales taxes, bonds and alcohol.
Crittenden County voters will decide on a sales tax aimed at enticing a company to reopen the county's hospital, which has been closed for nearly two years.
In other special elections today, voters in Phillips County will cast ballots on a sales tax to fund construction of a new jail and to maintain it, and Marvell residents will choose whether to allow alcohol sales in a restaurant.
And in Little Rock, voters will decide whether to allow the Central Arkansas Library System to refinance a series of bonds. The refinancing would lower the city's current 1 mill rate on those bonds to 0.9 mill and extend payments on them four years until 2032.
In West Memphis, it's the second time voters have been asked to approve a 1 percent sales tax to help fund the Crittenden Regional Hospital. If it passes, the tax is expected to raise about $6 million a year.
Voters approved a similar tax proposal in June 2014, after administrators of the cash-strapped hospital said they were facing $30 million in debt. The hospital closed briefly after a June 6, 2014, fire razed an unused intensive-care unit on its second floor.
Crittenden County residents overwhelmingly supported the tax during a special election June 24, 2014, but after reopening July 18, 2014, administrators said that despite the tax's passage, they could not afford to keep the hospital open.
It closed Sept. 7. The hospital board filed for bankruptcy, and administrators are accused in civil lawsuits of withholding money from employees' paychecks and failing to pay insurance premiums for 2014.
Voters repealed the sales tax in October after a circuit judge ordered an injunction placed on it when the hospital closed.
"It's important to have our hospital," Crittenden County Justice of the Peace Hubert Bass said Monday. "It saves lives. Patients have to be taken to Memphis now, and every second counts."
Ameris Health Systems, a Nashville, Tenn.-based company that reopens and develops medical facilities in the Southern and Western United States, indicated it would take over operations at the West Memphis hospital if the tax passes. The company had been negotiating with county officials since the hospital's closure, County Judge Woody Wheeless has said.
Bass said he did not favor the tax in 2014.
"I thought I knew was going to happen," he said. "They got that tax, and still see what happened?
"It hurt the confidence in the hospital. The biggest thing people want to know is if the same board has anything to do with the new hospital. Everyone on that board is not involved with this project."
If the tax passes, Ameris indicated it would open the hospital in September with eight beds, emergency services and medical support. Eventually, Ameris said it would grow, and it hopes to hire up to 400 people -- the same number of employees who lost their jobs when the hospital closed.
"Ameris is willing to take a chance," Bass said. "I say, 'Let them.'"
In Phillips County, officials hope passage of a one-half percent sales tax today will fund construction of a new $3 million jail. The county already has a 2 percent sales tax.
State officials closed the jail in Helena-West Helena in April 2013 after it failed a state inspection.
Jail locks didn't work, waste overflowed onto cell floors and inmates had access to materials that could be made into weapons, inspectors found. The Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committee ordered the immediate closure of the 75-bed facility.
Since then, Phillips County has sent its prisoners to neighboring counties. It costs about $750,000 a year to do so, said County Judge Don Gentry.
If the tax passes today, it should raise about $1 million a year, Gentry said.
Voters will also decide on issuing $4.35 million in bonds to construct a new jail.
"People say we need a new jail," the county judge said. "But no one wants to pay for it. People have a choice now. They can keep jobs and money here, or they can send it up the road."
Plans call for building a 60-bed jail adjacent to the old jail in downtown Helena-West Helena. Officials would continue to use the existing jail's laundry, kitchen and booking areas, which passed the 2013 inspection, and build a connecting tunnel to the new jail.
In Marvell, the 1,200 residents in the western Phillips County town will decide if a Mexican restaurant can serve alcohol with meals.
The county is wet and allows the sale of alcohol in stores, but residents had to gather more than 200 signatures to place the issue on the ballot to serve mixed drinks in restaurants.
Mayor Clark Hall said his town has three restaurants, only one of which has sought to sell alcohol.
Because Phillips County has been wet since the early 1800s, it is bound by legislation that requires an election to allow the sale of alcohol with meals. Counties that recently voted to sell alcohol, such as Sharp and Carroll counties, now require only the passage of an ordinance by City Council members to permit the sales.
"That's the bigger issue," Hall said. "It's going to cost us $2,800 to hold this election. If we were under the same laws as the other [wet] counties, we could have saved the money."
In the Little Rock library election, Central Arkansas Library System officials say the bond refinancing would generate between $15 million and $17 million for projects at Little Rock libraries. The vote won't affect other libraries in the system in Pulaski and Perry counties.
Library administrators plan to use the funds to buy more computers, books and add to other collections, as well as build additions onto three branches and purchase Internet-related technology upgrades.
State Desk on 07/14/2015