(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors this (Tues.) morning heard a request from Lakes Regional Healthcare as part of a $20 million upgrade of the hospital’s Emergency Department.
LRH President and CEO Jason Harrington said they wanted to gauge the supervisors’ interest in the hospital tapping into the county’s bonding capacity to help finance the project. He says it would be similar to a 2012 agreement in which the hospital tapped into the county’s borrowing authority at that time for another project…
“You would submit the bonds on our behalf. We would underwrite the risk in those bonds. So there’s a bond covenant that currently exists, there would be a bond, an additional bond covenant for the additional dollars that we’re discussing with you. We think under the new project that the potential savings on debt is about $2 million. The idea behind this is, again, a partnership between the hospital and the county. We can do that because we’re a county hospital. We really believe that, I never want to say no risk, because there’s never no risk in most things, but I think based on the underwriting requirement in the bond covenants, it really puts the county, and the taxpayers more importantly, in very little risk.”
As part of the arrangement, a tax increment finance district would also be established encompassing the campus of the hospital.
The supervisors unanimously expressed their support allowing the arrangement to move forward.
