Wednesday, May 14, 2003
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Wednesday, May 14, 2003 |
County accepts hospital requestBy JOHN
THOMPSON
The Fayette County Commission gave reluctant support last week to a request from Fayette Community Hospital for additional land to be annexed into Fayetteville. "I'd still like to talk to the city and see how large they want it to grow," said Commissioner Peter Pfeifer. The County Commission voted unanimously not to object to the hospital's request for 27.59 acres on Ga. Highway 54 to become part of Fayetteville. However, the County Commission did ask city officials to consider recommendations from the county's planning staff including keeping land from a proposed bypass free of development, deletion of a middle curb cut, limiting impervious service to 50 percent and creating bike and walking paths. Commission Chairman Greg Dunn pointed out the new addition to the hospital will still be served by county water. "We could have done this without annexation, but Fayetteville requires that anybody that taps into its sewer service be in the city limits," he said. Late last week, Fayette Community Hospital President Darrell Cutts spoke about the expansion plans. "We are still in the planning stages, and our focus is on improving patient and physician access to hospital services," he said. "Over the next few months, we will make space available in the hospital by moving administrative offices and services such as the Fitness Center, outpatient rehabilitation and diabetes education to leased space in the Fayette Professional Center, directly across the street." Cutts said the demand for services has increased at a rate greater than 20 percent each year. He said physicians, board members and administrators are evaluating services and exploring current as well as future needs. "Right now, we're looking at a variety of expansion needs such as women's services, cardiology, diagnostics, surgical, oncology, sleep diagnostics and others, as well as the possibility of a second medical office building on campus," Cutts said. In other news from last week's commission meeting, county officials sent Tax Commissioner George Wingo back to the drawing board with his plan for accepting credit and debit cards for tax payments. Wingo told the County Commission that any fees charged by the credit card servicing companies would be absorbed by the consumer, but county officials did not interpret his resolution to provide service as relieving the county of all responsibilities. "We're all for making things convenient, but we just don't want the rest of the taxpayers paying for this service," said Dunn. The commission suggested Wingo work with county attorney Bill McNally in writing a more airtight resolution.
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