Recently the home administrator bailed out with the comment that the county may need to sell Heddington Oaks within the next five years. Read my blogs on Bel-Wood, replaced by a new home called Heddington Oaks, where I argued strongly that the county should get out of the nursing home business. In 2008, there were only 7 counties that supported County nursing homes.. Our County Administrator went along with the Democrats and most of the Republicans on board and insisted on the most expensive nursing home in Peoria. Last guess estimate was that the edifice cost $51 million with almost all the money borrowed and to be paid back over the next 30 years. At last report, it was costing Peoria County property taxpayers approximately $4.1 million a year with a high possibility that the /State of Illinois will decrease their funding to Medicaid patients who compose a a major majority of this Taj Mahal facility.
To put this $4.1 million cost to Peoria County Property taxayers in perspective, all other private nursing homes in Peoria operate a profit or they go out of business while Peoria County goes further in debt or raises fees for other services or raise taxes which appears now to be on the horizon and which I have long predicted.
The County Board could have accepted a $12 million bid by a highly respected contractor. A new roof, a sprinkler system, (which Obama as an Illinois Senator helped fund most ot the cost of the sprinkler system, only to have Peoria County use the money elsewhere) a comlete new electical and plumbing system but that proposal did not please our administrator, now Peoria City Manager.
I am a compassionate person but I also understand finances. If Peoria County property taxpayers have no problem with this badly missed projection is ok with me but I as a Peoria County taxpayer do not agree.
If any reporter or county board member or past administrator disputes my facts, they are free to comment. Their silence can only mean that my facts presented over the years on the relocating and cost of the new home, are reasonably reasonably correct..
My advise is to even through late and costly is for the County Board put the facility up for sale as soon as possible.
More missed projections to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment