If you caught last month's County Board meeting you would have heard Brad Jones suggest that we use the Nursing Home Construction Fund to make this year's Nursing Bond Payment. It probably confused a good number of people including most Board members. But it comes down to this. The County borrowed an extra $4 million for the nursing home to cover the costs of mold and HVAC repairs as well as increased legal fees and various cost overruns. This extra bond payment is being made out of the General Corp fund that had a fund balance last week of $70,000 (that's with receiving a loan from another County fund). Since there is still about $700,000 unspent from the bond sale, this makes a lot of sense.
At the finance meeting last week, they passed unanimously a resolution to do exactly what Jones suggested. But he didn't stop there. In light of the goofy expenditure for the new sign at the Nursing Home, the resolution passed cuts off all expenditures from the fund except for legal fees. There won't be any way for someone to spend the remaining money (about $400,000) on anything akin to the pricey sign that just went up. So next year we can make another payment from this fun, although the hope at that time will be that we'll have a nice settlement that will pay off a good portion of the $4 million.
This is on the consent agenda for the County Board meeting later this month. That means it's likely to pass without discussion. But it's a good move initiated by Jones and a nice response to the dual problems of a depleted County fund balance and outrageous spending decisions.
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