Mike Walkup offered the following comment on Kelly Liebmann’s press release about the surplus in the Valley Hi Nursing Home fund. The article, in case you want to refresh your memory can be found by clicking on the title below:

Liebmann Calls Out McCann & Smith on Vote against Cutting $40 Million+ Valley Hi Surplus

Walkup’s words follow:

I think that Kelly presents a legitimate question.

Mike Walkup brought up the subject of cutting the Valley Hi Nursing Home levy, which was recommended at $3 million, a week ago. Here he listens as Nick Provenzano, a member of the Finance Committee, discusses his suggestion.

When we pass these tax levies they do not have any type of sunset provisions.

These are dedicated levies which are not supposed to be used for anything else.

Today we are still paying annually for levies of the Conservation District and for the Mental Health Board that were passed around 1970.

The Valley Hi levy was passed mostly to enable the county to tear down and rebuild a decrepit nursing home and provide proper staffing at a time when it was poorly managed and losing money every year.

Valley Hi’s entrance.

Since that time, the new building has been completed, is fully staffed, and has excellent management, which has reduced the need for the levy.

I was on the Valley Hi Operating Board and the Public Health and Human Services Committee which oversees it for two years.

The only reason we have pause to further reduce the VH levy is due to the unintended consequence of the tax cap legislation which prevents local governments from reinstating a levy amount that has been approved by the voters once the government entity has reduced it.

It actually causes the public to be taxed more, not less, as the VH situation illustrates.

The legislature should allow for a narrow exception to the PTELL law where special voter approved tax levies are concerned so the original amounts collected can be varied up or down within the original parameters approved by the referendum.

They should also look at allowing sunset provisions to be placed on future tax referenda.

In the meantime, we are sitting on a huge pile of cash and not getting much interest income from it.

The Northwest Herald ran a story on its front page today featuring the initiative of Chuck Wheeler to cut the Valley Hi levy by $750,000 to $2,250,000. In the quote considered most important, the NWH has Wheeler asking other local tax districts to follow McHenry County government’s example.

We could use it to build a new facility to anticipate future needs as the Baby Boomer generation is coming to a nursing home near you pretty soon.

This would be consistent with the literal wording of the original levy referendum to “build and staff” a facility for the care of the infirm and elderly of the county.

However, I don’t think that this type of use, however well intentioned and desirable it may be now, was what the voters necessarily had in mind when they passed the original referendum.

I have had conversations with elected officials where they have expressed the sentiment that the public cannot be expected to educate themselves on these types of issues and needs to just elect people to make those decisions for them.

I hope that is not the case.

Especially with all of the new forms of communication we have today, such as this blog, I would think that the public could be entrusted with more direct say in what happens in government.

The township consolidation referenda would have been one way to have done that.

Valley Hi is another.

If there is a desire to expand the VH operations, lets have a referendum on it rather than use money that was extracted from the taxpayers for another purpose.

In the meantime, lets reduce the levy to something approaching the actual annual deficit, and, if something unforseen happens, we still have a lot of cushion to work with.

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Previous articles on the Valley Hi Nursing Home levy:

• Finance Committee Provides Dilemma for Gottemoller
• Budget Back to Finance Committee
• The Finance Fight over Valley Hi Taxes – Part 1
• Finance Committee Fight over Valley Hi Taxes – Part 2
• Walkup Says Valley Hi Levy Will Surface at Tues. Night Meeting
• Valley Hi’s Financial Future
• Finance Reverses Course, Cuts Valley Hi Levy by $750,000
• Liebmann Calls Out McCann & Smith on Vote against Cutting $40 Million+ Valley Hi Surplus

If you would like to call or email your county board members to express your views on whether they should levy the $3 millions or not, you can find their phone numbers and email addresses here.