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T'ville mayor asking HUD for rural hospital funding Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day traveled to Washington this week to address officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He is seeking a special loan guarantee intended for new rural hospitals. "We have met the first criteria," Day said Saturday. "We have been invited to do a formal presentation." U.S. Senator Richard Shelby told Day at Saturday's Town Hall Meeting in Thomasville that he would help the city. He is the top Republican and former chairman on the Committee on Banking. "We have jurisdiction on HUD," he said. "We have oversight on HUD. I serve on the Appropriations Committee that funds HUD. I can't guarantee anything…but I will certainly push if you want me to." The current 49-bed facility, Southwest Alabama Medical Center is becoming antiquated, said Beth Etheridge, med/surg manager. "It is definitely dated. There is only so much you can do to keep the building itself up and going….We've renovated until we can't renovate any more….The building is in good shape for a 50-year-old building. "…We want to build a new hospital south of town…which will allow us to provide more up to date healthcare. "…We want to bring in more doctors, open up more surgical suites, more specialty doctors," Etheridge said. "It will work here because you are a kind of regional hub, a small but regional hub," Shelby said. "…If you build this small, regional hospital, I think it will grow. It will serve the needs." "Right now, we have to transfer anything other than basic medical care," Etheridge said. "We're not trying to be a regional medical center - but technically we already are - not so much to the south," Day said. "…The statistics that we have done show that (the Thomasville hospital and Grove Hill Memorial Hospital) do not compete. There is not but a two percent overlap." All of the Southwest Alabama Medical Center customers come from an 180-mile radius in north Clarke County, Choctaw County, Marengo County, Wilcox County and western Monroe County, the mayor said. "We have always been a regional community," Day said. The obstacle that the City of Thomasville has to overcome with HUD is the census showing Clarke County's population going down since 2000 (a 1,700 to 1,800 decrease), Day said. "It's an estimate - not based on any criteria other than some government agency decided it. Not one person from the census bureau has called Thomasville, Grove Hill and Jackson and asked how many housing units have we built these past several years.
"So we pulled together all of our numbers from 2000 up to now….There is no justification whatsoever for them to show us with a population decrease." Day will show HUD increases in housing units and water system customers. The mayor believes the population in Thomasville alone is up at least 25 percent since 2000.
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