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Members of the Lowndes County Area Chamber of Commerce (LCACOC) gathered at Deepwood Restaurant, also known as Mary ‘s Cafe, on Dec. 14 to hold the groups’ end-of-year meeting.

President and CEO of LACOC, Dr. Ozell Hubert, said that during the meeting two local business owners were recognized and awarded.

“We gave our 2023 Small Business awards to Maulik Patel and Kevin Lawrence,” Hubert said. “Maulik owns the Lowndes Package and Marathon service station, and Kelvin owns Subway and L&M Properties. Every year there is a National Small Business Month, and they were the recipients of our 2023 Small Business Month award because of their sponsorship and support of the Chamber.”

Also discussed during the meeting was the current emergency medical response crisis present within the county, and plans the Chamber has to rectify the issue at hand.

“We are interested in establishing Lowndes County Emergency Medical Services which would include ambulances,” Hubert beamed. “We already have the information that we need to move forward with that, and there will be some issues regarding that which we will take up during the January meeting.”

Hubert said that the Chamber’s ultimate goal is to establish a medical center complex in Hayneville to house urgent care services, ambulances, dialysis, medical transportation, and also medical specialty clinics. The chamber is hopeful that they will be able to retain four ambulances to service Lowndes County: one for Hayneville, one for White Hall, one for Fort Deposit, and one in reserve in case another is out of service.

According to Hubert, funding for the project will come from a proposed $0.01 sales tax referendum and there are hopes to keep hiring locally through partnerships with a local college as well as the Alabama Department of Commerce Workforce Development Division.

“We started an EKG (electrocardiogram) technician program, and we plan to train our own paramedics and our own EMTs (emergency medical technicians),” Hubert said. “Trenholm has agreed to partner with us for that training, and that training can begin when [interested individuals] are seniors in high school.”

The Lowndes County Area Chamber of Commerce will meet again on Jan. 11. For more information, interested individuals are encouraged to contact Dr. Ozell Hubert by phone at 251-387-0357, by email at dochubert7@gmail.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 518 in Hayneville.