Changing situation cause of tax vote

Commissioners say county requires it

Staff writers

Shelby County Commission member Mike Ritz still thinks, as he did in March, that a sales tax is a “regressive” tax .

ut he calls it the county’s Bbest hope to fund the new unified city-county school district, or as many as seven separate school systems in the county.

On Monday the County Commission approved Ritz’s proposal to ask voters in Memphis, Millington and unincorporated areas of the county to approve a countywide sales tax increase of a half-cent on the dollar. The resolution authorizing the November tax-increase referendum passed 7-5. It was Ritz’s fourth attempt to add the item to the commission’s agenda.

Suburban leaders, who had celebrated the passage Aug. 2 of referendums to establish their own school districts – and, in five of six towns, to raise sales taxes to pay for them – were united Tuesday in

15-23-34-39-55 32 JACKPOT: $36 million 4-13-39-46-51 1 JACKPOT: $320 million

8-9-14-24-27

Midday

3 buildings at the southwest corner of the hospital complex to make way for a two-story emergency department with a rooftop heliport and an ambulance entrance and parking on the first level.

The main entrance and lobby for hospital admissions will need to be reconfigured, although final plans haven’t been drawn by project architect brg3s, Carter said.

Plans call for 93,000 square feet of new space and 6,200 square feet of renovated space, adding 16 patient treatment areas to bring total treatment areas to 54.

The expanded department would accommodate 70,000 patients annually. ER visits skyrocketed to 56,000 in 2011 from 46,500 in 2007.

MEGA MILLIONS: TUESDAY

POWERBALL: SATURDAY

TENNESSEE CASH: MONDAY

CASH 3: TENNESSEE

6-9-1

Officials hope to received approval of the certificate of need by mid November, begin demolition of doctor’s office buildings early next year and complete the project in 2014. The office buildings should be vacated by Dec. 1, Carter said.

A Methodist ER expansion would be the latest in a series of investments planned in the medical center area, most recently a Regional Medical Center at Memphis proposal for $32.4 million in improvements.

The Med plan would spend $30 million to build on three unfinished floors at Turner Tower on Madison and $2.4 million to expand the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center.

“We are committed to Midtown and the Downtown medical center area and believe that this renovation and expansion will allow us to better serve our patients in those areas and beyond,” Carter said.

Carter said hospital officials believe expansion of the ER needs to happen regardless of the outcome of a national political debate over health care policy.

Methodist University is a teaching center affiliated with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and is recognized by The Joint Commission as a center for heart attack and stroke treatment.

“We believe this is a real opportunity to continue to grow those areas that we accommodate in our emergency department. It will give us the ability to enhance those services and be a state-ofthe-art emergency department here in this area of Memphis,” Carter said.

The facility will be designed to