Stimulus money to fund road upgrade

The long-awaited realignment of the Unionville-Deason Road / U.S. 41-A intersection is now waiting for environmental studies, as a result of the state deciding to use stimulus funds to pay for it, according to discussion Tuesday night by Bedford County Financial Management Committee.

Bedford County made a deal in 2007 to acquire land so that Unionville-Deason Road, which currently intersects 41-A at an sharp angle, could be curved around to meet the highway at a right angle instead. Right-angle intersections are considered safer. The intersection is close to both the Community Elementary / Community Middle School campus and the newly-constructed Community High School.

Since 41-A is a state-maintained highway, the county has been waiting for the state to approve the project. Bedford County Highway Superintendent Stanley Smotherman, a member of the finance committee, told the committee Tuesday night that the state has now approved the project on its end -- but now the state wants to use stimulus money to pay for the project, which would place it under additional federal regulations. The environmental impact of the project would now need to be studied, said Smotherman, who did not indicate how long this might take.

In other discussion Tuesday night:

Boys & Girls Club

Finance committee members told organizers of the proposed Boys & Girls Club that the City of Shelbyville does not need the county's permission to work with the club on the use of Central Memorial Gym.

The gym is owned by the county but leased by the city. The Boys & Girls Club would like to share use of the gym with the existing city recreation activities.

Barry Childers of the Boys & Girls Club board told the committee that Shelbyville Parks & Recreation Director Sylvia Pinson had said the county would need to approve such a deal, but County Mayor Eugene Ray said he believes the city has the authority to use the gym as it sees fit, and other committee members agreed. Commissioner Linda Yockey, who was in the audience for Tuesday night's meeting, said the county commission's courthouse and county property committee had told another Boys & Girls Club organizer, Johnny Donegan, much the same thing.

School Superintendent Ed Gray, a member of the finance committee, praised the project, saying it would reach out to children who now have few recreational options.

"This is going to be a definite asset for our community," said Gray.

Childers reported that fund-raising for the club was "going fairly well."

Com center bonuses

Finance committee members said it was unfair that employees of Bedford County Communications Center received Christmas bonuses equal to 1 percent of their pay which were not given to other county employees.

The past two years, faced with tight budgets, the county has given no pay raises and only $400 bonuses to county employees. The com center receives some of its funding -- including normal employee salaries -- from the county, but some of its funding from the separate Emergency Communications District budget, which is paid for by surcharges on telephone bills. The Emergency Communications District (E-911) board decided to grant the bonuses from its budget, said Yockey, who serves on that board, and the state allows the use of E-911 money for this purpose. She noted that, due to staffing issues, some com center employees had been forced to work 12-hour shifts or to work shifts with only six hours' rest between them.

But finance committee members said it was unfair to other county employees for one department to receive such bonuses.

"It sends the wrong message," said Commissioner Bobby Vannatta.

Yockey said that Commissioner J.D. "Bo" Wilson had already expressed his concerns about the bonuses and that she had passed Wilson's concerns on to the E-911 board.

Ambulance service

Chad Graham of Bedford County Emergency Medical Services appeared before the committee as requested to discuss his department's collections. Committee members had been concerned at a delay in collecting accounts. Graham told the committee his department had been short-handed, with one employee out for a while on maternity leave. He said that only Medicare collections are seriously behind and that BCEMS is making progress and expects to be current on its Medicare billing by the end of the fiscal year this summer.

He said that of the $75,613 private pay accounts which are more than 150 days old, $60,000 are active accounts where the customer continues to make payments on the account.

Graham noted that Medicare billing is a complex process and that mistakes can cause serious problems.

"If you send a Medicare claim wrong, they consider it fraud," said Graham.

The committee directed Graham to return in June and report on his department's progress in bringing Medicare billing up-to-date.

Insurance issues

* The committee heard that the county is being assessed $26,820 by Local Government Insurance Cooperative, which was its worker's compensation insurance carrier in the late 1990s, to cover claims dating back to those years. The county can get a discount by making payment before March 1, and would have to pay only $25,747.

* The county will have to pay Liberty Mutual Insurance a balance of $28,331 for a worker's compensation adjustment.

Blind vendors

The county planned to put the commissary and vending services at Bedford County Jail up for bid, but a state law gives Tennessee Business Enterprise, a food service business operated by the State of Tennessee to provide employment opportunities for the blind, the right of first refusal for any such services on state property, including county property, since counties are considered a subset of state government. The group has decided to exercise that right and therefore must be given the contract.