County follows EDA in approval of hospital construction bond issue

That’s two down and one to go.

On Tuesday, June 5, the Warren County Board of Supervisors became the second of three involved municipal entities to sign off on a bond issue to Valley Health to help finance construction of a new Warren Memorial Hospital (WMH).  The previous Friday, June 1, the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Board of Directors also approved issuance of an “up to $60-million” Industrial Revenue Bond for the hospital project.

Like the EDA vote five days earlier there were no negative votes – though one EDA board member (Baker) was absent, and one county supervisor (Sayre) cast his affirmative vote “with reservations”.

Those reservations, Shenandoah District Supervisor Tom Sayre explained, revolve around the ongoing lack of resolution on some sort of a compromise to maintain OB-GYN birthing services in the county pending Valley Health’s potential decision to add them to their new facility at some indeterminate future point.  Valley Health points to low birthing numbers at the existing WMH – about 330 a year – and the decision of a number of county women to already go to its Winchester Medical Center or points east for their decision to not include a birthing unit in the new hospital plan.  They stress there will be room to add a birthing unit once the numbers justify it.

Sayre called the decision, as well as the inability to reach some kind of compromise with a third-party entity to maintain such services here “sad and unfortunate”.

However, the specter of Valley Health potentially pulling the plug on a new county hospital without the requested financial assistance, held the day on the unanimous endorsement of the bond issue.

That bond issue will help propel the projected $97-million, three-story, 175,000 square-foot, 36-bed private room “general acute care hospital” construction project forward.  The new hospital will be constructed on a 150-acre campus, just south of Warren County Middle School on Leach Run Parkway.

As was explained by County and EDA bond counsel Dan Siegel on June 1, neither the county or town governments, nor their EDA are accepting any financial obligation for repayment of the bond; nor would they incur any penalty were the bond not to be issued “for any reason”.

And as stressed prior to the EDA vote on the final day of May, the hospital as borrower will also pay a fee of $240,000 to the EDA upon issuance of the bond, as well as cover any EDA costs associated to the bond issue.

Prior to the vote County Board Chairman Tony Carter asked staff if the Front Royal Town Council had approved the bond issue yet – “Next week, June 11,” County Administrator Doug Stanley replied of the scheduled vote at next Monday’s town council meeting.

That’s two out of three with the town in the batter’s box – and we all remember what Jack Nicholson’s presidential character in the sci-fi comedy classic “Mars Attacks” said of the loss of Congress to the Martian invaders – “We still have two out of three branches of government functioning, AND two out of three ain’t bad.”

Ah, for the good, old days (even if they were cinematic)…