{"id":1277,"date":"2019-08-08T12:09:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T16:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:10:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T16:10:02","slug":"city-to-freeze-lakeland-regional-hospitals-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/08\/08\/city-to-freeze-lakeland-regional-hospitals-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"City to freeze Lakeland Regional Hospital’s lease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

City commissioners have agreed to freeze Lakeland Regional Hospital’s lease for the next five years other while making budget cuts to avoid hiking taxes on residents. The financial impact may be felt by Lakeland for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By a 6-1 vote, the commission suspended the 2.75% yearly\nincrease to the hospital’s $14.38 million lease payment through 2024.\nThis will immediately cost the city approximately $6 million in lost\nrevenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to be a healthy and well community, and I think a\nhospital is critical to that,\u201d Commissioner Sara Roberts McCarley said in\nMonday’s city budget discussion. \u201cHaving a nonprofit hospital is vital to our\ncommunity at large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, the 2.75% annual increase, or escalation, of the\nhospital’s lease payments will resume. City Financial Director Mike Brossart\nsaid the temporary cap will compound resulting in a total loss of $48.6 million\nin potential revenue over the remainder of the lease through 2040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commissioner Bill Read was the sole voice of opposition to the lease freeze on the commission. Read’s other proposal that would have reduced Lakeland Regional’s payments by roughly\u00a0$4.5\u00a0million for the next five years and half the long-term fiscal impact gained no support. At least, not from his fellow commissioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland resident Paul Cunningham also spoke out against the\nhospital’s request to freeze its lease payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe rent is due; it’s time to pay up,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seems\nlately the hospital has been more interested in real estate speculation than\ntending to its patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham pointed to LRH’s 2015 purchase of a large parcel\nof land in Bartow. This investment was made the same year the hospital\nrenegotiated its current lease with the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elaine Thompson, president and CEO of Lakeland Regional,\nsaid the hospital needed to buy the land at that time as a potential future\nsite for care, given the city’s rapid growth in its southwest district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur board of directors’ No. 1 mission is that we provide\nhealth care to this community with the highest outcomes in the safest way we\ncan regardless of someone’s ability to pay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson, who announced her retirement in December 2020, has\nadmitted Lakeland Regional does have plans to expand its health care system,\nbut has been hesitant to discuss specific details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City Manager Tony Delgado and Brossart announced a series of\nbudgetary cuts Monday that would allow the commission to give the hospital the\nfiscal relief it sought without having to increase taxes for city residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delgado said in an effort to improve efficiency the city\nwill eliminate between four to six city staff positions that are either\ncurrently vacant or through attrition to save approximately $200,000. These\npositions will not impact the areas of police, fire, building inspection or\ncode enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city’s Solid Waste Management department has $2.5 million\nin surplus funding. City commissioners said in May they wanted this money set\naside as seed money for future Catalyst downtown development plans to help\nencourage private investment. Brossart’s recommendation is the city take\n$500,000 of the $2.5 million and leave it in the city’s General Fund to ensure\nLakeland has the operating cash on hand to maintain its current bond ratings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capital improvement plans to set aside park land in the\nsouthwest area of the city have also been removed from Lakeland’s 10-year plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of the city’s $48.6 million loss from\ncapping LRH’s lease payments may not be felt until the hospital’s contract\nends. When Lakeland Regional renegotiated its lease in 2015, it agreed to make\na one-time payment of $15 million to the city. This money was\ninvested into the city’s General Employee’s Pension Fund to pay down its\nunfunded liability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brossart said the City Commission had previously hoped that,\nstarting in 2021, it would be able to put any surplus revenue Lakeland had into\nits Public Improvement Endowment Fund. The ideal goal was to accumulate $200 million\nin this fund by 2040, and if desired, use the yearly interest generated to\nlower the hospital’s lease payments in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brossart and Delgado have proposed delaying any additional\nfunding to the Public Improvement Endowment Fund until 2023. This would\ndecrease the overall amount of the city’s financial investment, reducing the\nprojected ideal of $200 million to roughly $175 million \u2014\nif the city’s investments pan out as predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commissioner Justin Troller joined with Read in opposing the\ncity’s preliminary 2020 budget plans based on these changes. Troller suggested\ninstead of continuing to set aside $2 million for proposed Catalyst\nplans in the 2020 budget, that $500,000 of it should be used to make the 2021\npayment on time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to stay focused on growing that $15 million\nto get us to that $200 million; we need to hold strong,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\ncan’t start digging into the cookie jar for wish list items that are nice to\nhave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other commissioners were not on board with further\nreductions to the remaining $2 million set aside for Catalyst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madden said she expects the commission to invest time in\nfinding other means to bring in revenue, besides the hospital lease, to secure\nLakeland’s financial future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it’s a little unrealistic that we are only giving\nthem relief for five years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City commissioners have agreed to freeze Lakeland Regional Hospital’s lease for the next five years other while making budget cuts to avoid hiking taxes on residents. The financial impact may… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}