Rockdale residents will get a chance to express opinions, and be briefed, on the status of a new proposed 16.9-cent property tax at 5:30 p.m. Thursday when the Rockdale Hospital District board holds a public hearing in the fellowship hall of Meadowbrook Baptist Church.
The district has proposed, but not yet adopted, that property tax figure to fund its $200,000 annual obligation toward the new Health Point-St. Joseph’s Clinic expected to open as soon as October in a suite on the former Richards Memorial Hospital campus.
CHI (Catholic Health Initiatives)-St. Joseph’s has committed $200,000 annually toward the $400,000 officials say is needed to run the facility, with the remaining funding sought locally.
TAXES—The hospital district has been seeking to reclaim the half-cent sales tax it once collected for health care, but which has been going to the Rockdale Municipal Development District (MDD) for the past nine years.
Directors have said a public petition to the MDD, asking it to surrender the tax, is the first step toward an election in which Rockdale residents could vote on which entity will collect the tax.
That has not happened. As of June, according to the Texas Comptroller, the MDD has received sales tax collections for 2019 totaling $267,888.
‘RESTART’—“Everyone knows that, essentially, we’re starting healthcare over again for our area,” Dick Burns, hospital board president, told The Reporter. “The unknown at this point is what will that look like over time and what financially will be required.”
Still to be determined is the exact nature of health care facilities and how much tax money, of either, or both kinds, will eventually be required, especially since there has been strong interest in re-establishing some kind of emergency care in Rockdale, not only a clinic.
“People have expressed the desire for the future plans to include the restart of an urgent care-emergency room type system and have specialists who come back to treat patients here,” Burns said.
“That includes many of our citizens who are elderly, immobile, or feel unsafe traveling a distance to have healthcare or have no means to get to a provider,” he added,
He also believes a possible path to such emergency care will start with the new clinic. (See editorial, page 5A).
“How that ultimately works we’ll just have to work our way through,” he said. “But we believe that CHI-St Joseph will work with the community towards those goals,” he said.
That could also mean a property tax of some kind might also be needed in the future, even if the hospital district reclaims the sales tax.
EXPANSION—There’s another possibility looming.
If a property tax is enacted, the burden would only fall on residents of the City of Rockdale. If the hospital district were enlarged to the boundaries of the Rockdale ISD, that burden would be shared.
“Those in the current district boundary (Rockdale city limits) are the people who have shouldered the financial load since 1994 when the district was established. This financial load sharing is also something the board is looking into,” Burns said.
For that to happen there would have to be elections both inside the current hospital district and in the area proposed for annexation.
That idea was first floated 25 years ago but such elections were never held (see below).
‘COST EFFECTIVE’—
Richards Memorial Hospital underwent a number of financial crises during its 44-year existence.
During the second crisis in 1994, the hospital district was created to replace the old Rockdale Hospital Authority. Original purpose of creating such a district was to enable it to accept sales tax money to keep the hospital open.
Organizers said, under the law, the district had to be created with ad valorem (property) taxing authority but purposely set a one-cent tax cap, a rate so low it was viewed as “not cost-effective to collect.”
On March 15, 1994, voters created the district. On May 7 of that year voters instituted the half-cent sales tax to be used by it.
TAX CAP—But things got much worse six years later. By summer, 2000, directors said the hospital would close if a property tax were not enacted.
The original idea was for voters (City of Rockdale) to raise the tax cap from 1 to 50 cents, then a later election would be called asking voters to expand the hospital district’s boundaries from the city to those of the Rockdale Independent School District, lessening the tax burden on Rockdale city residents.
On Aug. 12, city voters overwhelmingly (605 to 186) okayed the 50-cent tax cap.
But the district expansion election never happened, even though the Rockdale city limits did expand.
Opposition developed and there was even a lawsuit filed by a rural Rockdale couple.
The expansion election was first scheduled for Nov. 7, 2000, then Feb. 13, 2001, then there was talk of having the balloting in May, 2001.
None of those elections took place and city residents paid all of the property tax.
CONCERNS—Time went by. After going through a bankruptcy and emerging, the hospital became part of a private company.
Finances improved and hospital district directors began lowering the property tax. By 2007 it was at zero.
In the next few years support developed to use the sales tax for economic development and some questioned the correctness of taking (sales) tax money to support a facility that had become a private, for-profit, hospital.
In 2010, voters okayed creation of the MDD and abolition of the hospital district’s sales tax and the new MDD began collecting it.
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