According to the article in the Sept. 14 News- Herald, the hospital board is raising their tax levy for 2020 by $200,000. This brings the total levy increase to half a million dollars over the last two years and represents a 62.5 percent increase over what it was from 2011 to 2018 when there were no levy increases. Why was the hospital able to go all these years without a levy increase but now needs so much more money? Read on.
Last year there was an attempt by the hospital to partially justify the 37.5 percent increase in the levy for 2019 by using the flawed rationale that if you divided this increase by all the years the levy wasn’t increased, it only represented a small percent increase per year. I guess this was to make us feel better about it. I did not feel better. It was also said that the increase had absolutely nothing to do with the $24.5 million expansion and remodeling. This was blowing smoke since any high school student could explain that if you increase the physical size and scope of an organization, the operational expenses of salaries, utilities, maintenance etc. will go up accordingly.
I wrote a letter to the editor last year pointing these things out and saying that the seasonal residents who pay more than 50 percent of the county’s residential property taxes and rarely use the hospital, and the permanent residents deserve more details about what administrative and cost saving measures would be put in place so significant levy increases would not happen each year. As expected, no details were ever provided and look what has happened for 2020 and will continue to happen if residents remain silent.
This year the hospital says the 2020 levy increase is needed because, in part, there are significant financial losses in nearly all categories of hospital operations. They go on to say that “given our location and low population, North Shore Health will likely always be dependent on the levy.” If the hospital can’t generate enough income to prevent it from imposing outrageous levy increases because of too few patients, why was $24.5 million spent in expanding the footprint of hospital operations resulting in significant cost increases?
State law used to cap the hospital levy increases at 3 percent but now there is no cap and no state oversight. The levy has become a limitless cash cow for the hospital board to cover losses from what might actually be nothing more than poor budgeting and management.
Jim Peterson
Lutsen
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