Health care red ink is a concern

Taking care of multi-year losses at North Central Health Care (NCHC) promises to loom large in January deliberations when the Marathon County Human Resources, Finance and Property Committee will attempt to figure out how to spend $26 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The committee last week Tuesday was tasked by chairman John Robinson, Wausau, to review public suggestions on how to spend the federal dollars and consider how to fund projects in various “buckets” suggested by the U.S. Treasury. He said the committee had to make a basic decision concerning how much of ARPA to spend each year through Dec. 30, 2024.

County board chairman Kurt Gibbs, town of Cassel, said a major item for funding will be taking care of pandemic- related annual deficits both incurred at NCHC in recent years but also projected for the future.

He said NCHC both had and was projected to lose around $12 million between 2019 and 2022 and that while NCHC was supposed to keep between $8 and $16 million in reserves, the agency’s fund balance was “well below that.”

Gibbs said the loss figures include red ink incurred by the Pinecrest nursing home in Lincoln County.

Gibbs argued for allocating a good share of ARPA funds in a “revenue loss” bucket that would give the county maximum flexibility for spending the money. With this designation, the county could deal with NCHC’s red ink.

Robinson did not argue against using ARPA to handle NCHC’s deficits but said the county board would likely not want to use “a good portion” of the dollars for the agency’s budget woes. “I don’t think the county board would go for allocating all of that,” he said.

Administrator Lance Leonhard said he will propose using ARPA funds to buyback time off incurred by many county employees during the pandemic. If the county puts a time limit on using this time off, he said, “a lot of people will take a lot of time off” and county service to the public will suffer.

“As I said in my budget message, the county is a people business,” he said.

Leonhard said the county’s Environmental Resources Committee hopes to use ARPA to fund its Fenwood Creek Subwatershed Project and pay farmers for implementing regenerative agriculture practices, i.e. cover crops and reduced tillage.

Other committee members agreed to begin a detailed discussion on allocating ARPA money at its Jan 8, 2022, meeting.

Administrator Leonhard reported the county had applied for more federal pandemic money available through the state’s Badger Bounceback Project.

The projects include funding:

_ Funding a regional morgue in Wausau, $9.3 million.

_ Installing a restroom/shower facility at Big Eau Pleine Park, $1.1 million.

_ Upgrading the Nine Mile Forest chalet, $1.7 million.