The Legal notice referred to financing the New Health Department and the new North Shelby School by borrowing $34 million and paying it back in installments.
If you remember, building the New Health Department was a part of the $100 million sale of all the county health care facilities. Carolina Medical advanced Cleveland County $23 million to build the new Health Department. The new Health Department has been built and is totally paid for.
Now read this part of the new $34 Million dollar load application documents.
“WHEREAS, the County has also determined to finance the acquisition, construction and equipping of the Cleveland County Public Health Center, through reimbursement from financing proceeds of prior capital expenditures for that facility (the “County Project” and, together with the School Project, the “Project”); and ….”
The fact is the Health Department has already been constructed on county owned property, has been equipped and is presently in operation and has been paid for. Now the county wants to finance a loan on the new Health Department by calling it a “reimbursement of prior capital expenditures.” In short and in laymen’s terms, the county wants to “pawn” the new Health Department as collateral on a new $34 million loan.
This is how all this came down.
At the January 3. 2017 Commissioner’s meeting a presentation to Commissioners stated that the county needed $34 million to build a new North Shelby School ($13.5 million), Infrastructure for a new industrial park in the Washburn Switch area the county was getting into ($11.5 Million) and an IT Infrastructure Project ($8.5 million) and the new paid off Health Department would be put up as collateral.
During the public hearing many people, including myself, urged the Commissioners not to go for such a loan until the school project had been well discussed by the school board and an unnecessary $4 million cost overrun had been resolved. I also raised the issue about auditoriums at Burns and Crest High Schools and urged the Commissioners, if they were set on consolidating projects, to include the auditorium projects too. CCS Superintendent Stephen Fisher told the Commissioners that the auditorium projects were off the table and CCS was not asking for the auditoriums to be funded.
As is typical in Cleveland County the Commissioners did NOT pay any attention to the citizens and voted unanimously to float the $34 million loan application as it was, millions in waste, and to forget the auditoriums at Burns and Crest High Schools.
