...“It is unfortunate the 1/4 cent sales tax (click here) did not receive enough votes to pass in Rockingham County. I appreciate the county commissioners’ willingness to place it on the ballot. There are several capital projects which would have benefited the school system, as well as the community college. The school board and the commissioners will have to review our options and make decisions on addressing the capital needs. It is our hope that the lottery funds for capital needs/debt service will be fully funded at the 40 percent level rather than the current 22 percent. If this were to happen it would be beneficial to both boards. The debt service concern would be less going into the 2015-16 fiscal year.”...
She was fighting the good fight with citizens that had something to say about their experience within the North Carolina education system and under the leadership of Tillis. Her message was spot on for the state, but, she didn't include people like the Board of Education in Guilford County or Rockingham County.
Where was the voice of the Belhaven, N.C. Mayor Adam O'Neal of North
Carolina who lost a hospital to the tactics of the North Carolina Republicans
while citizens were having heart attacks without hope of reaching a hospital in time?
Belhaven, N.C. Mayor Adam O'Neal walks along highway 1 in Stafford, Va on his way to Washington, D.C. O'Neal is walking from the site of the now closed Vidant Pungo Hospital in Belhaven to Washington, D.C. to protest the closure of his town's hospital.
July 28, 2014
By Tony Pugh
WASHINGTON — Only four days after the Pungo District Hospital (click here) in Belhaven, N.C., closed its doors for good on July 1, Portia Gibbs suffered a heart attack in neighboring Hyde County, which has no doctors or hospitals.
She was fighting the good fight with citizens that had something to say about their experience within the North Carolina education system and under the leadership of Tillis. Her message was spot on for the state, but, she didn't include people like the Board of Education in Guilford County or Rockingham County.
Where was the voice of the Belhaven, N.C. Mayor Adam O'Neal of North
Carolina who lost a hospital to the tactics of the North Carolina Republicans
while citizens were having heart attacks without hope of reaching a hospital in time?
July 28, 2014
By Tony Pugh
WASHINGTON — Only four days after the Pungo District Hospital (click here) in Belhaven, N.C., closed its doors for good on July 1, Portia Gibbs suffered a heart attack in neighboring Hyde County, which has no doctors or hospitals.
Residents of Hyde, a sprawling, rural county in eastern North Carolina, had long relied on Pungo for emergency medical care. Now the nearest emergency room was 75 miles away.
More than an hour after a Medevac helicopter was called, Gibbs, 48, died just as the chopper arrived to airlift her to a hospital.
“Before, she would have been given nitroglycerin, put in the back of an ambulance and been to a hospital in about 25 minutes,” said Belhaven Mayor Adam O’Neal. “In that hour that she lived, she would have received 35 minutes of emergency room care and she very well could have survived.”
The memory of Portia Gibbs was alive and well for O’Neal on Monday as he completed a grueling 273-mile walk from his hometown to the U.S. Capitol, where he met with reporters to share his town’s story of losing its only hospital....
These people are still suffering from the inability to have a hospital close enough to them to save their lives. Walking with Mayor Adam O'Neal should have been Kay Hagan to be sure to emphasis the ruthless of the legislators in Raleigh and the man that lead them. That ad should have played in every venue across the USA stating, "It could be you next, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed." Why? Because North Carolina didn't take the Medicaid expansion that would have saved Pungo District Hospital and Portia Gibbs. Now, because the Dems were unable to formulate a message to the people of the USA Portia Gibbs will never know her 49th birthday.
