“All I can tell you is we had a bomb threat called in to the County Judge’s office,” said Russell County Sheriff Lee Smith following a called-in bomb threat on Tuesday morning, January 21.

“We evacuated everybody out of the courthouse, out of the judicial center. The state police and Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department brought the bomb dogs.”

Smith said as of press time both buildings had been cleared but would remain closed for the duration of the day before opening back up on Wednesday morning, January 22.

He declined to comment on what the specifics of the phone call that was received at the Judge-Executive’s office, referring further questions to the Kentucky State Police.

Calls to the media relations division of the KSP for comment were unsuccessful as of press time last Tuesday.

————————————

Russell County Hospital Board Chairman Charles Blankenship said at last week’s regular monthly meeting of the facility’s board of directors that they were in no hurry to proceed with any hospital expansion at this point, “just to say we’ve got something.”

“Who knows, we may never build anything,” Blankenship said near the end of the meeting. The hospital was awarded $21 million in funding from the USDA toward proposed expansion back in 2012.

“We may modify everything we’ve got here,” he said. “As healthcare changes, it may be a few years when we look at something but, right now, we’re in a perfect storm with all this healthcare and we’re not going to do anything stupid to the taxpayers of this county.”

Blankenship said the expansion funding was still secured for some time, but was unsure of an exact time.

“One of these days I will check and see how long we can keep these funds reserved without having to give them up,” Blankenship said.

Dr. Jerry Westerfield, who is a physician in radiology and nuclear medicine and regularly attends board meetings, said the board should still keep open the idea of merging with Adair County’s financially struggling Westlake Regional Hospital.

Judge-Executive Gary Robertson, who was at the meeting, said with the current fiscal shape of Westlake he wouldn’t want to think about merging unless they get their debt taken care of.

“They’ve already put an extra tax on to starting whittling away toward (their debt) and they just don’t let counties write off debts,” Robertson said.
“It is back in the county’s lap.”

Robertson urged the board members to proceed cautiously with any expansion.

“We don’t want to bite off something and be in the same shape,” he said. “I’m all for whatever expansion, do it in phases or whatever, but I don’t believe the citizens of this county would go along right now for us to try and do some kind of a joint-venture with a facility that owes $20 million plus.”

Still, Westerfield called it an “opportunity” that needs to be searched out to the fullest as he believes it would be good for both counties’ citizens’ health as well as financially for both facilities.

No action of any kind was taken on any of the discussion and the meeting was adjourned.