LHD board reconstituted

After a month with only one trustee, The Lincoln Hospital District board has been reconstituted with the swearing in of four new trustees at their meeting Tuesday Oct. 22.

The new members include Sherri Wood as the board Chair, Josh Lattin as Vice Chair, and Jim Agner as secretary and Tracy Daniel as the fifth at large trustee. Karen Frank-Plumlee, the sole remaining trustee following the resignations of Judy Spath, Shane Brown and Maryanne Brown in September, remains on as the district's treasurer.

Following the resignations in September, Frank-Plumlee was tasked with finding the new trustees.

"They all were very forthcoming and willing to serve because they care about medical service for Lincoln," she said.

Frank-Plumlee said Agner had been on the board before, having only left in May. "He stepped right in immediately."

Wood was also on her list of potential replacements, but Frank-Plumlee hesitated to ask her since she had only recently retired, but after talking to her found she was already looking at ways to serve the community. She said Lattin stepped up at the last minute after another person who initially agreed to serve on the board decided other obligations wouldn't allow it.

Frank-Plumlee said she'd talked to several people earlier about stepping into the seat vacated by Terry Spath in July, but found none who were able to serve. Nevertheless, she said it wasn't hard to get people to step up to fill the vacancies this time. She said part of that may have been due to a bylaw change, approved by the new board on first reading at the October meeting, that changes the LHD board meetings from monthly to quarterly.

The impetus for the change was due to people's inability to meet every month, she said.

"We had talked about (quarterly meetings) since I came on the board in 2016 but just had never acted on it," she said. "It was put forward to the new board. They knew coming in we'd be voting on that. Looking at the agenda for a year, it looks like it will fit nicely into quarterly meetings."

Moving forward the meetings will be held in January, April, July and October.

With the maintenance work completed in the last year and with a new care provider coming to Parker Medical Center, Frank-Plumlee said they're in pretty good shape.

She said the change to the bylaws doesn't prevent them from calling special meetings if needed, and said they could go back to monthly meetings if circumstances required it.

The new LHD trustees will hold their seats until May, when all five seats will be up for election, with two seat open for one year terms, two seats open for two year terms and one seat open for a three year term.