In a called meeting Wednesday evening, the Habersham County Commission approved a full-time position for the Parks and Recreation Department in an effort to take on the responsibilities and operations of Total Fitness.
The meeting was held at 5 p.m. at the county administration building in Clarkesville. Commissioners Jimmy Tench and Bruce Harkness were not present due to scheduling conflicts.
Opposition
At the beginning of the meeting, Chairman Ty Akins requested that the agenda be amended to allow for public comments. Two citizens signed up to speak. Both spoke in opposition to the county’s plan to take over Total Fitness and hire another full-time person at the recreation department to run it.
“Why do we want to get into the gym business?” asked Joey Brown. He explained to the commission, from documents he obtained from the hospital, that the hospital lost $126,720 for 2021 and 2022 combined. “Reckon why they want to get rid of it?” he asked rhetorically.
Brown told commissioners that over the last week, he stopped by Total Fitness at various times to see how many people were using the facility. During his visits, he said he counted a total of six people. He asked the commission to address the services the county already has and not increase services. Brown also asked the commission to address the jail and landfill issues and improve recycling opportunities in the county.
‘Bloated government’
Keith Canup asked the commission to start classifying employees as essential and non-essential and then asked them to increase the number of essential employees, such as EMTs, firefighters, road workers, and road deputies and cut the number of non-essential employees.
“This does not make sense to me [adding personnel to the recreation department],” Canup said. “Already bloated government added to bloated government doesn’t make fiscal sense to me as a taxpayer. I guarantee you’re going to go up on the millage rate either this year or next year.”
Canup said that since the hospital was losing money on Total Fitness, he was concerned the county would be no different. He expressed concern that taking over the program would result in money being poured into it.
“You know, 47,000 residents in this county should not shoulder the burden for a few on a bad deal,” he said.
Canup implored the commission to get their facts before making decisions. He also expressed his concerns about the meeting itself and the time and date.
“Don’t rush out and table the vote at the meeting then all of a sudden create an emergency meeting because it’s like some big thing’s got to be done tomorrow and fix it on a day when most people are at church or ain’t even off work yet,” he said.
OPINION
Lower overhead
Habersham County Manager Alicia Vaughn explained to the commissioners that the county is in a better position than what the hospital was related to billing with the Silver Sneakers program. According to Vaughn, Medicare only reimbursed the hospital for the use of the Total Fitness facility, whereas now, with the county, Medicare will reimburse the county whether the program member uses the fitness center, the pool, or just walks inside the recreation department.
Vaughn assured the commissioners that the county could run the operation much more efficiently than the hospital because the county won’t have the overhead costs that the hospital had.
The hospital leased space at the recreation department for Total Fitness at a cost of $18,000 a year. The hospital had one full-time employee and three part-time employees. According to Vaughn, the county only needs to hire the one full-time employee. She said the recreation department already has the needed part-time staff on payroll.
The position requested would be a Programs and Fitness Specialist. The starting pay is anticipated to be $42,000 a year or $20.19 per hour. Recently, Commissioner Bruce Palmer stated publicly to Now Habersham that the position would start at $18 per hour.
At the February commission meeting, Brooke Whitemire presented that the midpoint pay would be $24.89 per hour.
WATCH Habersham County Commission called meeting here
‘Evaluate it at budget time’
Commissioner Palmer stated that once the county gets into it, if it doesn’t work, the county would reevaluate it at that time.
“In my opinion, we can move forward with it; we can evaluate it come budget time,” said Palmer.
Habersham County Commissioner Dustin Mealor had a different perspective about taking over Total Fitness.
“We had no business being in the hospital business, I really don’t think we should be in the gym business,” Mealor said. His idea is to keep Total Fitness open temporarily and then issue a request for proposals (RFP) to see if a private entity would want to run it. At budget time, he suggested they reevaluate the service.
Should the service make a profit and no RFP is received, then the county should continue running it, Mealor said. However, if the county does receive an RFP, then it should be run by a private business. If it runs at a loss and there is no RFP, he would no longer support the county running it.
The commissioners present voted 3-0 to approve the full-time position for the recreation department. Commissioner Palmer made the motion “to approve the creation of a full-time Program and Fitness Specialist position to be reevaluated at the beginning of the 2024 budget year either to maintain or submit an RFP for operations.”
This is the eighth new position the Habersham County Commission has approved for the recreation department since December.
Medlink link?
After the meeting, Now Habersham spoke with Vaughn about the possibility of Medlink taking over the operations of Total Fitness, as discussed at the Hospital Authority meeting. She stated that she had reached out to Dr. Derrick Klemm of Medlink in Demorest last week but had not heard back from him.
After the meeting, Now Habersham reached out to commissioners Tench and Harkness for their reaction to the decision.
“I am a trial lawyer, and I cannot be given 24-hour notice of meetings, but I thought there was no real rush for today’s meeting because I think we still needed more information because, one, if the hospital could not make it work, how can the county make it work? Two, the county government should not be running a private gym in direct competition with the taxpayers of this county who own and operate gyms within just a few short miles.”
“The people who are currently using the gym could have still used the Aquatic Center to walk daily for free, and the Senior Center offered to take over the gym equipment, and I believe they could have run it at no extra charge to the county,” Harkness said. “I am for taking care of our people, but yet we have to be wise and prudent in how we spend the taxpayers’ money, and I am very conservative and plan to continue to be so.”
Tench has not responded.
