Supervisors reject Pine Crest funding referendum resolution

BY JALEN MAKI AND TINA L. SCOTT
TOMAHAWK LEADER EDITOR AND MERRILL FOTO NEWS EDITOR

A proposed referendum related to the funding of Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill will not be on election ballots this fall.
During its meeting at the Lincoln County Service Center in Merrill on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors rejected a resolution that sought to place a binding referendum on ballots for the Tuesday, Nov. 5, election.
Under the proposed resolution, if it had been approved by voters, Lincoln County would have been allowed to exceed levy limits by $5 million each year from 2025 to 2029 to fund operations, maintenance, repairs, updates, and debt service at Pine Crest.

The proposed resolution

The proposed resolution was authored by Board Chair and District 10 Supervisor Jesse Boyd and co-sponsored by District 12 Supervisor Julie DePasse.
According to the resolution, under the current management agreement between Lincoln County and North Central Health Care (NCHC), which manages Pine Crest, Lincoln County is required to provide NCHC with an annual cash stipend of $440,000 to fund four full-time maintenance staff positions and to “bear the financial costs of routine facility maintenance and repair services for Pine Crest Nursing Home.”
The resolution said the sum of these obligations comes out to about $900,000 each year.

Continued debates lead to lack of resolution

During the Tuesday Board meeting, lengthy debates on the “right” amount to ask for in a referendum led to lack of resolution on the issue and a failed resolution overall, with some Supervisors maintaining Pine Crest didn’t need funding of $5 million per year but that a lower number was more reflective of the County’s current needs to continue operating the nursing home and that maintenance was primarily what needed to be funded because the nursing home had now become profitable. Some Supervisors maintained that because Lincoln County is ultimately responsible for all of the costs of the maintenance and operation of Pine Crest, putting forth a referendum that only included maintenance items was unrealistic and that increases in State reimbursement reflected in 2023 and 2024 can’t be relied upon for the future.
Two proposed amendments to the original resolution for referendum language for lesser amounts failed. The first brought by Dunphy and seconded by District 9 Supervisor Christine Vorpagel proposed amending the resolution to seek to exceed the tax levy limits by $1.5 million for 10 years to fund capital improvements only with the management agreement with NCHCC to be paid by current levy and the debt service remaining on the addition to the building to be paid by Pine Crest revenues. The amendment was defeated 6-14 on a roll call vote with Supervisors McCrank, Woellner, Dunphy, Vorpagel, Bishop, and Dorava voting yes and Supervisors Anderson-Malm, Zelinski, Thiel, Boyd, Detert, DePasse, Lyskawa, Lemke, Miller, Meunier, Wickham, Cummings, Simon, and Hartwig voting no.
The second amendment brought by District 22 Supervisor Greg Hartwig, seconded by District 21 Supervisor Eugene Simon, proposed amending the resolution to seek to exceed the tax levy limits by $3.98M/year for five years. That amendment was defeated 10-9 on a roll call vote with Supervisors McCrank, Zelinski, Thiel, Vorpagel, DePasse, Bishop, Miller, Dorava, Simon, and Hartwig voting yes and Supervisors Woellner, Dunphy, Boyd, Detert, Lyskawa, Lemke, Meunier, Wickham, and Cummings voting no. Despite having a slight 10-9 majority, the amendment failed because such a resolution and/or amendment required 75% of the full Board’s approval to pass.

Now the Board is back to square one and will need to figure out how to proceed. A number of options may be considered, but getting a referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot is no longer one of them. For the short term, Lincoln County Chairman Jesse Boyd said the Board may look to use the remaining ARPA funds to pay for the NCHC contract in 2025. “We had to pay $1.2 million from ARPA ‘extra’ last year because they didn’t get the State Supplemental in 2022,” Boyd said. “If the transfer of ARPA funds to the General Fund happens to pay contract fees with North Central Health Care, over a third of the total ARPA dollars we received will have gone to NCHC. If State Supplemental doesn’t come in and NCHC states they need more money … After this year, there is no more ARPA money left; everything has to be allocated by the end of 2024, and we don’t have money to backfill the losses.” Any such allocation of ARPA funds will need to be approved by the County Board prior to the end of December.