Ray of hope

Grant would lessen tax burden in quest to get health care for Rockdale

Most of the public comments at Thursday’s Rockdale Hospital District hearing were easy to understand.

Everybody in the room wanted an emergency room restored to Rockdale.

Nobody in the room wanted to have their taxes raised. (That includes the five hospital district board members, all of whom are Rockdale residents, and who would be raising their own taxes).

After that, it gets tricky.

Nobody is beating down the door to get into Rockdale to re-establish an ER here. It’s expensive and complicated.

There isn’t any such thing as a stand-alone ER. It must be affiliated with some entity, and that must be an entity that knows what it’s doing. Running a clinic costs in the hundreds of thousands, annually. Running an ER costs in the millions.

There is one entity, which knows what it is doing, which wants to establish a health care presence in Rockdale. That is CHI-St. Joseph’s. At the moment, it appears that one-step-at-a-time approach is the best way to inch toward the return of emergency care.

If the district cannot reclaim the half-cent sales tax collected for the past nine years by the Rock-dale MDD—or perhaps even if it does—almost certainly some form of property tax is going to be imposed upon Rockdale residents.

Or possibly more than Rockdale residents. Proposals included expanding the hospital district boundaries to those of the school district or establishing a countywide health care district.

Because of the state-required structure of Thursday’s meeting, hospital board members were not able to answer questions or dialogue with the audience except in the most general terms.

That does not apply to The Reporter asking questions on its own and we did. Here is what we found out.

• The 16.9-cent tax rate which has been proposed by the hospital board is for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

• In 2022 the rate would drop to 10.8 cents.

• If the hospital district were extended, by a vote, to the boundaries of the Rockdale Independent School District the rate would be 6.8 cents in 2019-2021 and drop to 4.4 cents in 2022.

But, and here’s where the “ray of hope” comes in, Health Point (St. Joseph’s rural partner) has applied for a grant to assist with the operation of the Rockdale clinic—which, remember, appears to be the best chance for a first step toward more facilities which could include an ER—and it’s a long-term annual grant.

If that grant were received, here are the numbers for comparison.

• The tax would debut in the current city boundaries at 5.6 cents, and drop to 1.2 in 2022.

• If the boundaries go to those of the school district, the tax would start out at 2.3 cents and drop to one-half cent in 2022.

The hospital board has been meeting with Congressman Bill Flores to solicit his support and also to get the congressman’s assistance on trying to save the district’s Critical Access Hospital designation to take advantage of rural medical cost coverage.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed. And thank the board for their tireless efforts on behalf of Rock-dale health care.—M.B.