[Peace-discuss] Champaign County nursing home's finances on agenda

[Brian Dolinar]

 Champaign County nursing home's finances on agenda By Paul
Wood<http://www.news-gazette.com/news/reporter/pwood/> Wednesday
May 7, 2008

URBANA – The Champaign County Board will look at ways to rescue county
finances from deficit-spending on its nursing home Thursday night –
including the possibilities of raising taxes or even selling the facility.

The finance committee meeting will take place at 7 p.m. at the Brookens
Administration Center, 1776 E. Washington St., U.

The nursing home lost $600,000 in Medicaid funding this spring, faces higher
costs for agency nurses because it has had difficulty finding full-time
nurses, has already borrowed from the county and expects to borrow more next
month.

Finance committee Chairman Brendan McGinty said the committee's discussions
would include a possible question on the November ballot to raise taxes to
help fund nursing home operations, an idea raised by union members at the
nursing home, which had layoffs this week.

On the other extreme, the committee will start the process of looking for a
buyer of the $24 million facility, which opened last year.

That process is one "we don't have to execute, if we fix things in the
interim," the Urbana Democrat said.

"We think we have to use this multipronged approach concurrently to address
all the issues," McGinty said.

Brad Jones, a Champaign Republican, is using the meeting to ask for a
transfer from the nursing home's construction fund to help the county's
general corporate fund.

"We've got $800,000 left over in the nursing home construction fund. We
issued $4 million in bonds on the home, which requires a $300,000 (annual)
interest payment.

"I want to take $300,000 out of that fund and pay this year's bond payment,"
he said.

The construction fund balance has been earmarked for legal costs; the county
is seeking repayment of the $4 million construction cost overrun.

"Hopefully, next year we will have some sort of settlement" from the
construction companies involved, Jones said. "We need to remove the
temptation to spend this money."

Another committee member, rural Urbana Republican Steve O'Connor, said the
discussion of selling the nursing home would be only preliminary.

"We're not at the point where anybody wants to have a serious discussion
about selling," O'Connor said. "I'm not sure if I will ever get to that
point."

Since this is a committee meeting and the items are not listed as voting
measures, no action will be taken Thursday night on selling the home, board
Chairman C. Pius Weibel, a Champaign Democrat, said.

Weibel said, though, that he expects plenty of public participation at the
meeting.


-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080507/84e5d87b/attachment.htm