Progress in the city’s strategic plan was the topic of conversation in the April 16 Hillsboro City Council meeting. The council discussed updates in the various sectors they have set goals in. For the childcare center, City Administrator Matt Stiles told the Council that they now have three bids. “They’re still over the budget but a little bit closer. So there’s still a gap in what’s been raised and what’s available through grant funds and what the project anticipated cost is. So the H4C group is now working to try to figure out how we’re going to close that gap,” said Stiles. “I would anticipate that we’ll probably still approve the bid move forward, but they’ll probably want to look at some USDA funding, some kind of gap to fill that gap and then try to raise money to repay that. So that’s kind of how it’s looking right now. It’s really interesting that we talked about this as a board from the time we started this one year, it ended up going up almost $600,000 in cost.” The plan is to award the bid in May with a timeline of about a year for the construction to be completed. “So we’d be looking at the middle part of next year,” said Stiles. Housing has also had a good amount of progress. There will be another public meeting for the Mennonite Housing Project on April 30 at City Hall. If that project is supported there will be 24 units, duplexes, two and three-bedroom models.
Source: Hillsboro Free Press

The Marion County Board of Commissioners heard from EMS Director Chuck Kenney about the Interfacility Transfer Policy. “There’s been several different policies over the last couple years. Some conflicting with other agreements,” said Kenney. “We had a transfer policy that was adopted in August of ’22. And then we had the policy that the board adopted in December of ’22 that had some charges associated with it, like fees and everything that Brad [Jantz, county attorney] drafted. And then after that we had the service agreements with the hospitals. And so some of the things that are in those service agreements are in conflict with the standard policy and the most recently adopted transfer policy,” said Marion County Administrator Tina Spencer. Some of the conflicts have revolved around mileage and costs for ambulances. “What I’ve been doing is basically the 60 mile thing, working with both hospitals. I’ve been taking bits and pieces out of the previous policies and agreements and kind of just working as a patient advocate really. So this is tidbits from all the policies and agreements summarized into one form so we have something in reference to go and actually look at and kind of clear the pond a little bit,” said Kenney.
Source: Hillsboro Free Press