[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish Hospital's $9 million property tax up for vote Saturday

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish Hospital's $9 million property tax up for vote Saturday


Print Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Benjamin
Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 
Email the author | Follow on Twitter 
on April 01, 2014 at 2:23 PM, updated April 01, 2014 at 5:07 PM

The St. Bernard Parish Hospital Service District will ask voters Saturday to
approve a $9 million property tax, but for only one year. The Parish Council
agreed in early January to put the 30-mill tax on the ballot, although most
council members made it clear they were skeptical that the non-profit
hospital should receive more money. Parish President Dave Peralta also has
criticized the proposal.

The tax would cost a homestead-exempt owner of a $150,000 home about $225 in
2014. Such as home now incurs a tax bill of about $1,013 annually, so the
hospital tax would raise it to about $1,238, according to the assessor's
office.

The millage would cost a homestead-exempt owner of a $200,000 home about
$375 more for the year. That homeowner currently pays about $1,688 annually
in taxes, and so the added 30 mills would raise the bill to about $2,063,
according to the assessor's office.

The $9 million revenue from the tax would represent about a 30 percent
increase in the hospital's operating budget for the year. That's based on
the hospital's 2014 budget projections.

When urging the Parish Council to place the measure on the ballot, hospital
Chairman Jim DiFatta said "the hospital could go on and continue on dragging
water and scratching and fighting," but that "the board doesn't want this
hospital simply to survive. It wants it to thrive ... and drive this
hospital to flourish for the remainder of time."

DiFatta and Wayne Landry, a former board hospital chairman and now its
interim chief executive and current board secretary, have said the tax
revenue would be used to hire specialist doctors to improve care. They, in
turn, would bring in more money to the hospital and thus help ensure its
sustainability. They said the millage also would be used to hire more
emergency room personnel, in part to reduce wait times, and to improve
electronic medical records.

They said that hiring specialists, such as urologists, ENTs and thoracic
surgeons, would create a full-service hospital so that parish residents
would not need to leave the parish for specialized care.

The parish had been without an emergency room or full-service hospital since
Hurricane Katrina swamped Chalmette Medical Center. That private hospital
never re-opened, and has since been demolished.

When St. Bernard Parish Hospital opened in the fall of 2012, the nonprofit
Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System was set to manage it and
provide its CEO for five years. But the Franciscans pulled out of its
agreement soon after the $70 million hospital opened in Chalmette. The
Franciscans cited differences in management philosophies, and former and
current hospital staff described contentious working relationships because
of Landry's managerial style.

Along with the Franciscans' pullout, the nascent hospital saw about half of
its administrative managers leave or resign within the first few months of
its opening.

In response to the Franciscans departure, Landry said at that time that the
they left because they wanted to operate with "layers and layers of
management," whereas the hospital board wanted to run the business more
frugally.

In the past few weeks, Peralta has been running advertisements in his "The
Peoples Post" column in The St. Bernard Parish Post, urging residents to
vote against the tax, in part questioning the hospital's financial footing
and criticizing Landry for not stepping down as CEO as he previously said he
would. DiFatta, in turn, has sought to buffer Peralta's pitch by running his
own ads stating, "There has been a lot of misinformation regarding our
hospital." One of the questions DiFatta addresses in one of his recent ads
is why the hospital doesn't have a third-part manager.

"Hospitals that are not successful must dump off to management companies,"
he stated in a Tuesday ad in The Post. "Our hospital is successful, and with
the support of this millage, will be profitable well into the future." He
said the hospital "is successfully managed" and that its "finances are
handled exceptionally well."

As to whether St. Bernard has the population to support a full-service
hospital, DiFatta said the hospital is averaging about 24,000 emergency room
visits a year and more than 2,000 patient admittances. "If we had the
physician specialists, we could be generating much-needed revenue instead of
letting the other hospitals scoop it up!" DiFatta stated in the recent
advertisement. "At present we are operating at near break even."

In November 2010, St. Bernard vogters backed a 10-year, 8-mill tax to keep
the hospital afloat during its first three years of operation, a period when
Landry and others said the hospital's revenues would be less than expenses.
But the timing of that referendum prevented the assessor's office from
including the levy on 2010 tax bills, so it became a 9-year millage instead,
costing the hospital about $2.3 million.

"The original millage for the hospital was to cash flow the hospital, in
other words to provide the money for payroll and supplies to get the
hospital open and running," Landry wrote in a four-page statement supporting
the millage sent to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune earlier this year. "This
one-time millage will take the hospital into the future with the complete
range of medical services.

"This millage will provide for additional services that cannot be attained
without it and will allow totality in medical treatment for all of St.
Bernard."

"I certainly understand if someone cannot afford this one-time millage,"
Landry wrote in his statement. "And if they cannot, they shouldn't vote for
this.

"If they can, then they can vote yes knowing that they will be assisting to
contribute potentially in excess of $10 million a year in economic impact
for St. Bernard generating more health care jobs, while at the same time
guaranteeing that all of their medical specialty needs will be met right
here in their own parish," Landry continued. "It will strengthen the
hospital and our parish.

"The hospital board has brought this measure for the people to decide on
after exhausting all potential sources of monies to take the hospital to a
complete full service facility."

Recent ads for the hospital -- paid for by the Committee Supporting St.
Bernard Hospital LLC -- have stated that residents "can improve access to
quality health care with one vote," and that it is "your community-owned
hospital."

"Vote YES and take back control of your health care by voting to support the
St. Bernard Parish Hospital. Make health care more accessible for everyone
in the parish," stated a recent Committee Supporting St. Bernard Hospital
mailer.

There are about 25,500 registered voters in St. Bernard, according to
secretary of state's office data. Voting will be held from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday at precincts through the parish.

For a list of those precincts, click here, or go to
http://media.nola.com/politics/other/St.%20Bernard%20Polling%20Locations.pdf
.

The exact language on the April 5 ballot is the following:

"Shall Hospital Service District of the Parish of St. Bernard, State of
Louisiana (the 'District'), levy a thirty (30) mills tax on all the property
subject to taxation in the District (an estimated $9,000,000 reasonably
expected at this time to be collected from the levy of the tax for an entire
year), for a period of one (1) year, beginning with the year 2014, for the
purpose of providing health care services and equipping, maintaining and
operating hospital facilities within the District?"

To keep track of the results on election night, stay tuned to NOLA.com | The
Times-Picayune's election coverage and follow the results on the Secretary
of State's website by clicking here or going to
http://staticresults.sos.la.gov/04052014/04052014_44.html.

For a full list of parish polling locations and addresses, view and download
the document below:

Click here to download St. Bernard polling location file (PDF)
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/04/st_bernard_parish_hospital_on
e.html