Carthage City Council to vote again on hospital trust grants – News – The Carthage Press – Carthage, MO

The Carthage City Council will vote again at its next meeting on Tuesday June 26 on two grants from the McCune Brooks Hospital Trust that it voted down at its June 12 meeting.

The Carthage City Council will vote again at its next meeting on Tuesday June 26 on two grants from the McCune Brooks Hospital Trust that it voted down at its June 12 meeting.
Carthage City Administrator Tom Short said the two grants will come back as seperate resolutions for each, a change that will probably be permanent for all grants from the trust from now on.
The grants proposed by the Board of Trustees were:
$25,000 to the Fair Acres Family Y to fund a committee to look at building a new aquatics center in Carthage.
$37,500 to the McCune Brooks Healthcare Foundation to pay half the cost of 10 new hospital beds for Mercy Carthage Hospital.
A single resolution to approve both these grants failed by a 4-3 vote, with one abstention and two absences, after Carthage City Council members, in a sometimes tense discussion, showed strong support for the grant to the Y, but skepticism toward the grant to the Foundation.
City Attorney Nate Dally, in a parlementary ruling, determined since a motion had already been made and seconded to approve the entire resolution, council members could not amend the resolution to remove the Hospital Foundation grant and approve the Family Y grant, hence the decision to bring the two grants back as seperate resolutions.

Discussion
Council Members Brady Beckham and Kirby Newport were most vocal in their opposition to the $37,500 grant to the Healthcare Foundation.
Beckham opened the discussion by stating his support for one grant, while questioning whether the city’s trust money should be going to the hospital for what he said was “general maintenance of their operations.”
“I’ve never been in this situation in six years,” Beckham said. “Why are we being asked to pay the sale money and invest it back in capital in the facility?”
In its application for the grant, the Healthcare Foundation said $37,500 was half the cost for 10 beds that Mercy Carthage Hospital had asked it to fund after the hospital purchased 15 beds.
The existing beds date back to the construction of the hospital back in 2007, the grant application said.
The McCune Brooks Healthcare Foundation planned to match the McCune-Brooks Hospital Trust’s money with $37,500 of its own, raised in a later fundraiser.
City Council Member James Harrison, who abstained from the vote because he is a member of the McCune Brooks Hospital Trust, explained that the trust considered both grant requests based on whether they met the trust’s mission, as described in the ordinance that created the trust in 2015 to benefit the “health and welfare of the citizens of the greater Carthage, Missouri metropolitan area.”
“The board body basically says we want to make sure we provide, for whatever application comes to us, it’s about the healthcare and wellbeing of our citizens and all that stuff,” Harrison said. That’s why we recommended approving the money.”
Council Member Mike Daugherty spoke in favor of the grant the hospital, comparing it to when the city applies for grants for various projects.
“It sounds to me that, as a city, we do what we can with our own funds and we go get grants from the state,” Daugherty said.