Floyd County supervisors appoint hospital trustees, increase board size to seven

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Medical Center will be able to levy taxes now to help support hospital finances, and it will have two additional board members to help make decisions about taxing and other matters.

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors voted at a special meeting Monday morning to increase the size of the hospital board from the current five commissioners to seven trustees under the new organization approved by voters earlier this month.

The hospital will now be governed by an elected board of trustees instead of a board of commissioners appointed by the supervisors. But members of the board won’t have an opportunity to be elected until next November, so for this first year the supervisors will again appoint the members.

On the agenda at a special supervisors meeting Monday morning was to first decide between two options allowed under the Iowa code — a five-member board or a seven-member board.

Rod Nordeng, medical center administrator, asked the supervisors to keep the number of board members at five, and to appoint the current commissioners as the new trustees.

“As the administrator, my goal would be that we keep the five that we have. There will be an election next November. Those that are interested would have to go through the process to get on the ballot,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean there aren’t other great people out there to serve on it, but five has worked just fine.”

But Supervisor Linda Tjaden said that two people had applied to be commissioners, Cheryl Erb and Randy Heitz, and increasing the size of the hospital board to seven members would enable it to take advantage of some people with different backgrounds.

Three of the current five members of the hospital board have previously been hospital employees, Tjaden said.

“I think this is a big transition,” she said. “I think it’s great to have people that … come with a different mindset, and more of a budget process, just understanding some of the challenges that you’re going to have in the future and how to really look at the money that’s coming in.”

Heitz, an Iowa Farm Bureau regional manager, said he voted in favor of the change in the hospital’s organization, but said some people he talked to before the election questioned whether it was a good idea to have a majority of hospital board members be former employees.

“Going to seven would appease that certain part of our population,” Heitz said.

“When you look at the property tax payers of the county, remember 71% of the property taxes paid to public institutions comes from farms and agriculture,” he said, so the ag sector will pay more than $350,000 of the $500,000 annually that the hospital has proposed collecting.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath said he agreed with the idea of increasing the number of board members, especially with “two good applicants out there that would be willing to help with this transition.”

Supervisor Doug Kamm said he has been on boards where there can be too many members to be effective, but he voted to support Tjaden’s motion to set the hospital board number at seven, as did Schwickerath.

The supervisors then approved appointing the current hospital board members plus Heitz and Erb as trustees.

The new hospital board held an organizational meeting Monday night, where the seven members took their oaths of office.

The trustees are Ron James, elected chairman; Mary Jo Lacour, elected treasurer; Myrna Jakoubek, elected secretary; and Craig Anderson, Amanda McCarty, Heitz and Erb.

The trustees approved keeping all existing medical center contracts, policies and staff in effect until amended if needed. Board meetings will remain the third Monday of the month in the hospital administrative conference room. Meetings have been and still are open to the public.

Also at the supervisors meeting Monday morning, the board:

• Heard funding requests from Elderbridge Agency on Aging and the Floyd County Library Association for the 2020-21 fiscal year as the board began budget work. Both groups said they would like to receive the same amounts they got in the current year, which was $92,874 for the library group and $12,482 for Elderbridge.

• Set a public hearing for 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 16, for an amendment to the urban renewal plan for the Southwest Bypass Urban Renewal Area to provide tax increment financing (TIF) support for a cement storage facility Croell Inc. is building near its plant in the Southwest Development Park.

• Heard an update on the law enforcement center project from Brian Shindelar of the Samuels Group. He said demolition work was taking place in the old coal room and the western entrance, and footings work could begin in a couple of weeks.