By Bonita Wilborn
John Moore took office as Mayor of the Town of Hammondville on November 10, 2020, but has recently decided to resign his position and pursue another avenue. Moore and his family have moved from Hammondville to Valley Head to reopen the healthcare clinic there, so local citizens will have medical care readily available to them closer to home than what they currently have.
According to Moore, he felt there was a great need for primary and urgent care in the Towns of Valley Head, Mentone, and Hammondville. Therefore, he has plans to expand the clinic to add services such as a designated sick room with a separate entrance, a mobile clinic for visits to work sites or to homes when needed, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) audiograms, which are mandatory for many manual labor jobs, expand the laboratory to better determine bacterial or viral infections on-site, offer a PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) COVID-19 test, and bring different varieties of x-ray machines to diagnose a broken bone or get a chest x-ray to diagnose breathing issues.
Moving to Valley Head certainly could not have been an easy decision for Moore, as he always has and still does love the Town of Hammondville, but try as he may, no suitable building was available in Hammondville for a healthcare clinic, and Valley Head had not only a suitable building but one that had previously housed a healthcare clinic. Moore is hopeful that the clinic will be ready to host a ribbon-cutting sometime in March of 2022.
John Moore has served the Town of Hammondville for several years, first as a Councilman for four years, and then was elected as Mayor. During Moore’s 15-month tenure as Mayor of Hammondville, he and the Town Council got the ball rolling on a new sewer system, which will benefit the Town for years to come and make Hammondville more attractive to new industry.
Mayor Moore worked with sponsors in Valley Head to restore Hammondville’s baseball field so that the Valley Head Tigers would have a regulation-sized field to host their school’s home games. Mayor John Moore, along with Councilmembers Trey Moore and Felica Harrison, also reached out to the community to get their input on creating a Town Flag.
Mountain Valley News reached out to Hammondville’s Town Clerk, Kimberly W. Johnson, for information on this matter. Johnson confirmed that the Town Council had accepted the resignation of Mayor John Moore and that Mayor ProTem, Tammy Brown, will assume the office of Mayor. Johnson also confirmed that Councilmember Trey Moore, John Moore’s son, resigned his position on the Town Council. His replacement will be established at a future meeting of the Hammondville Town Council.