According to Irene Dominguez, director of indigent health services for the county, the additional funding — which comes weeks after the county received an $80,000 planning grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration — will allow the program to explore grants for the health center.

“The funding would be used to contract with J. Sarkiss and Associates,” said Dominguez. “We would be able to get almost half that — approximately $15,000 — back, as well as at least a portion of $7,500 (through grants and federal funding).”

According to Commissioner Bill Crooker, the health center project has also gotten the attention of officials with Scenic Mountain Medical Center.

“We've met with George Parsley, CEO of Scenic Mountain Medical Center, and he's very supportive of this program,” said Crooker. “He told us he's currently looking into ways to help fund the center. he also told us we should be prepared to hire a second nurse practioner after the first six months because of the expected workload.”

Dominguez said the center could help alleviate some of the burden on the SMMC emergency room.

“A lot of people who have no health insurance or are under-insured simply use the emergency room as a doctor's office,” said Dominguez. “They wait for the condition to to become chronic before they seek medical attention. That puts a real burden on the emergency room.”

Dominguez said Joanni Sarkis will work hand in hand with the project manager — who has yet to be named — of the program. The project director's biggest task, she noted, will be securing necessary funding for the center.

“The biggest hurdle will be finances,” Dominguez said. “We'll be examining grants, fundraising efforts and other means of funding. And we have to start working on that soon. Right now, we're just in the planning stages.”

Commissioners also approved a $ 3,500 purchase request from Howard County 911 Director Tommy Sullivan for the installation of communications equipment for emergency situations.

“This is for the emergency management system,” Sullivan told the court. “This will allow us to give a different frequency to the county judge, the mayor's office and others in an emergency situation. We've already bought the equipment, we just need to have it installed on our tower. We'd like to get it finished before the wind starts getting bad.”

The court approved the request — which was within Sullivan's current budget — with local communications business Basin 2-Way expected to complete the task.

Contact Staff Writer Thomas Jenkins at 263-7331 ext. 232 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it