Wheeless addresses CCRTA

Wheeless addresses CCRTA

news@theeveningtimes.com

Everywhere he goes, people want to know all the same things. The Crittenden County Retired Teachers Association invited Judge Woody Wheeless to their April meeting. The educators asked about happenings at the old hospital, happenings with the new hospital. The judge looked focused on the economic impact of each project.

The teachers heard a a positive update about the county building that formerly housed a hospital and the new tenants, the Arkansas Community Corrections Department.

“We got some good news last week when we turned the building over to another entity,” said Wheeless.

“The West Memphis Utilities company notified us that we had overpaid for 18 months, so we got a refund. As of April 1, they took over all the expenses.

Wheeless expected good local impact on everything from real estate to retail sales with the new job opportunities.

“They hired the mainte- nance personnel to go to work for them,” said Wheeless. “One of the best parts about it is they are bringing 138 jobs to the county. It brings a payroll of 3.5 million to the community and an operating budget of over 6 million dollars. We are excited about it. If you look back over the past ten years, I don’t know anything that brought that number of jobs the first day they opened up. We’ll have new people here with new money.”

With the ACC occupying the professional building and the hospital building the status of the Schoettle Center was addressed.

“We are just incurring expenses there and those are minor” said Wheeless. “We are working with Delta Arts to go in there and I think that would be a good fit for the community. One good thing is we will still be able to use the building for public

meetings.”

Wheeless moved onto the new Baptist Hospital. The January election redirected the one percent sales tax to bonds specifically for the Baptist Hospital development on North 7th Street in West Memphis.

“That allows us to generate the full amount of money up front for hospital construction and allows us to pay it off over the life of the five year tax,” said Wheeless. We are working with the revenue bond people now. We are on target for a ground breaking by August this year. This will cause more economic growth.”

Wheeless summed up the discussion saying, “All together we have the ability to generate 400-500 jobs in the area.”

By John Rech