Rentech deal one step closer

By Adam Koob (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Tuesday, April 22, 2008

NATCHEZ — On Monday morning the Adams County Board of Supervisors got one step closer to closing Rentech’s land deal.

A meeting between the board and attorney Bob Latham, conducted in executive session, dealt with the mineral rights issues that stopped the land closing weeks ago.

Latham said the board essentially agreed to the terms of contracts, to be entered into, with those who own the actual mineral rights on the land.

However since the mineral rights owners have not signed the contracts that would allow the deal to move forward Latham said he could not discuss specific details of the contracts.

“It’s mostly confidential right now,” he said.

At the end of March the land deal was supposed to have closed, at which point Rentech would have taken possession of several hundreds acres of property from International Paper.

However a group of individuals who owned mineral rights on the land raised issues that halted the project.

Latham said the new contract, already agreed on by the county, Rentech and IP, only needs to be signed by those who own the mineral rights on the land.

Latham said the contract could be circulated to rights owners as early as this week for their signatures.

Supervisor Mike Lazarus said the board’s acceptance of the terms of the contract was in the best interest of the county.

“We’re moving forward,” he said.

In other news, the board also met the new CEO of Natchez Regional Medical Center, Scott Phillips.

Phillips, who works for Healthcare Management Partners, was recently hired to help restructure NRMC.

The hospital recently announced its intent to declare bankruptcy due to financial difficulties.

Phillips said he was meeting with the board to basically introduce himself, however the meeting was conducted in executive session.

After the meeting the hospital board’s attorney, Walter Brown, said Phillips brought the board up to speed on the most current situation at the hospital.

Board of Supervisors President Henry Watts said the meeting was informative.

Watts said while no plan was laid out for the hospital’s future, Phillips discussed having a possible plan ready in approximately six weeks.

While Phillips could not be reached for comment, Brown said the plan would outline several possible scenarios for the hospital’s future once Phillips has had an opportunity to thoroughly study the hospital.

The supervisors also endured a fair amount of trash talk after they adopted a motion to finalize a new bid for garbage collection in the county.

Last week the board accepted a bid from Preferred Transport, LLC, that would raise the price of trash collection in the county from $8.50 to $13 per month.

Sher Sheshab Heter-C.M. Boxley voiced opposition to the raise in rates.

“It’s time for businesses to eat some of the loss,” he said.

One of the biggest reasons cited for the rate hike was the increased cost of diesel used to fuel the trash collection trucks.

Supervisor S.E. “Spanky” Felter said the rate hike was unavoidable.

“We hate that it went up,” he said.

Supervisor Darryl Grennell voted against the contract adoption saying he was opposed to raising rates and instead the job should have been re-bid.