Nursing Home Foreshadowing

There was a bit of news and opinion in the paper this Sunday preceding Tuesday's County Board Committee of the Whole likely to get into the same issues. First from Kacich's roundup today:

Nursing home finances

A chart that was shown last week to members of the committee reviewing the single offer to purchase the Champaign County Nursing Home was a reminder that it’s possible the county might not come out ahead with the $11 million bid.

The various sale-related costs (broker’s fees, sale counsel, bond counsel), plus outstanding bonds,

outstanding bills to vendors and loans the county has made to the nursing home could eat up the $11 million.

“The longer this goes, the more they’re adding to the debt,” said County Treasurer John Farney, who keeps track of the nursing home’s cash flow and the money it owes to the county government. “That hurts the chances of us being made whole.”

The county government, he said, already has forgiven more than $2.8 million in loans to the nursing home.

And there’s a new batch of loans that add up to about $1.5 million owed to the county government. There’s no guarantee the county will get that money, he said.

“The county’s going to get paid last on all of these things, kinda like a bankruptcy. Vendors will get paid before us,” Farney said.

Van Anderson, the temporary special projects administrator who is working on the nursing home sale, said officials are working hard to “come up with defensible numbers” to assess where the county would be after a possible nursing home sale this summer.

Among the numbers still moving: how much the nursing home will be able to recover from the estimated $4.8 million it is owed, how much closing costs will amount to and whether the nursing home will be able to pay any of the money it owes the county government.

Full article including other topics here. There was also a local business owner and attorney arguing not to scare off the single bidder, including a great deal of budget and historical facts worth considering. The full commentary is available here, but ended on this summary note:

I understand that five or six offers to buy the nursing home were expected on the Feb. 28 deadline. Only one was received. That's extraordinarily discouraging. Given the circumstances, I strongly urge that every reasonable effort be made to complete the sale to the offeror.

The county isn't mandated by law to provide a nursing home. We've spent tens of millions of dollars chasing a daydream that the county clearly can't afford. I've seen neither the opponents to the sale nor the labor union offer money or any solution to these unceasing problems. It's time for the opponents of the sale to reconsider and to support selling the nursing home as soon as possible.