VAS wants money for building

Hurd donated site in 2001

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

— In a special meeting Monday night of the VAS Ambulance Corporation’s Finance Committee, the four members of the committee met to discuss the 30- by 40-foot building on Richard Hurd’s property in Gateway. The meeting was called earlier Monday by board vice-chairman Cris Henry.

Hurd, a founder of Volunteer Ambulance Servce to northeast Benton County, the fore-runner to the current VAS organization, offered his land for a site for the then-volunteer ambulance service to place a building on his land to house a second ambulance unit. Now that VAS is no longer volunteer, Hurd has asked for the building to be vacated by VAS.

Henry presented documents to the group, including the appraisal for the metal building and any past minutes he could find that mentioned a land lease, the building, materials or money paid toward the project.

At the appraised rate of $31.56 per square foot, according to the appraisal by state certified general appraiser Roderick Grieve, the total value for the gross building area (GBA) is $37,867. That plus the depreciated value of improvements makes the total replacement cost of the building $40,465.

“I feel pretty good with the appraisal being accurate,” Henry said.

The newest board member on the committee, Grady Allen, wanted clarification whether or not VAS uses the building at all.

Henry said the corporation stores minimal items there.

Henry presented minutes from past meetings, dated 2001. He said he researched the minutes looking for any information pertaining to the proposal of the building, the lease of the land and the purchase of the structure itself. The then VAS board of directors passed a motion to allow $15,000 from the money market account to cover expenses of erecting the building on Hurd’s land.

According to the minutes, the total expenses for the building itself came to $14,455.

“We know all of this stuff is still there,” Henry said, referring to the building on Hurd’s property.

The minutes from the meeting dated Oct. 3, 2001, state that Dick Strodder, the then accountant who has since “abruptly resigned,” according to Henry, would write a lease after a survey of the land.

There is no record of any written lease or contract.

Henry said the 2001 boardentered into a verbal agreement with Hurd that would allow the building to stand on his property.

“It never went any further than a verbal agreement,” Henry said.

“This thing has become a pain in our butt.”

Hurd has asked VAS to vacate the building. His letter went unanswered.

At the Jan. 12 board meeting, Tony Miltich, then spokesman for the board, refused to discuss the matter with Rob Hey, Hurd’s son-in-law, saying both parties had agreed the issue would be handled by their respective attornies.

Henry said the purpose of the meeting was to get a direction to start traveling in to solve the issue.

“Obviously they have a problem they want to rectify,” Allen said. “They just want it for free.”

Allen stressed that it was community funds that went into the purchase of the building and that is public money.

“If we don’t stick to our guns with at least the public’s money, we’re wrong,” Henry said, adding that he will not go less than the $15,000 it took to put the building there in the beginning.

“I will not go less than that, ever. They can take me to court, sue me, do whatever ... because that’s the public’s money. We have an obligation to protect the investment of the community. I don’t want to be responsible for saying we gave away $15,000,” Henry said.

The committee agreed to investigate further, such as calling the county courthouse to see if there is a lease on file and looking through old records from the bank, then bring their findings to the board for further action at the regular meeting set for Feb. 9.

The Finance Committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb.

2, at the VAS offices in Garfield.

The meeting is open to the public.

News, Pages 1 on 01/27/2010