The push to take away a perk from the city-owned hospital to force it to pay for utilities has come up, since a new regime and new city leadership have come on board.

City of Purcell citizens have worked and put their blood, sweat and tears into our town having a hospital.

And I’m not just talking about the new one, but going back into the late 1960’s as well to get the first hospital in play for the city in 1970.

It’s one of our pride and joys and it’s because the citizens want it.

They stepped up to vote around 80 percent yes for the sales tax to build a new one and the hospital employees know and appreciate that.

PMH Operations Financial Manager Renee Barber called the newspaper Tuesday to say how much she and all the employees at the hospital appreciate the support of the community, and know full well without it there would be no hospital.

“We are very grateful,” Barber told me on the phone.

“We are very grateful to the citizens for the sales tax.”

She went on to say there has been some insinuation that the employees do not have a vested interest in the hospital and if it closed they would just walk away.

That’s far from the truth.

“I have worked here for 16 years so I do have vested interest in the hospital and so does Chris Wright,” Barber said.

And it’s more than a sorely-needed medical facility.

It employees 108 people with a total payroll of around $4.6 million.

It would be quite a hit to lose that kind of payroll.

And what’s even more questionable is the “why”.

The city has an annual budget of $37,773,619.

The roughly $108 thousand the hospital would pay in utilities for a year would be like throwing a thimble full of water into the ocean for the budget.

It’s .286 percent of the budget.

By comparison, the school, being another big employer in town, has a payroll of just over $8 million with about 180 positions.

The city’s annual payroll is in the neighborhood of $3.5-4 million.

Those kinds of payrolls are the life blood of our community.

We couldn’t afford to lose any of those.