OPINION

Portage County needs new health care center

Letters to the editor

EDITOR: Let me understand. The county wants to save money, so we want to sell off 80 beds and give $10 million away to take the health care center off of our hands.

What do we get from this?

We save several hundred thousand dollars in operating costs. Costs that we could cover without county levy if we had all private rooms and baths.

Ask your county administrator what she has that money earmarked for. I would bet she has it spent already.

When I was on the committee, we reduced the levy needed from $1.5 million a year to $500,000 a year.

I was on that committee when I was a County Board member. I saw the report Portage County paid to have done. The one that said by year five, we could be between zero to $20,000 needed in county levy to support the health care center.

I say build a new, 100-bed health care center at the site of the Gilfry building. Move the Health and Human Services personnel to the building that the county bought downtown, and continue to utilize the old health care building for either a locked unit, which are short on beds in Wisconsin, or turn it over to Justiceworks to replace Portage House.

We could inquire if there are grants available for a program for released female offenders like what we have for men. As far as I know, there is no program for women in this state. The wing setup would make this a good fit for a program such as this, as well as expanding the setup we now have for men. Funny that we get funds from Medicare and Mediaid to support skilled nursing, and then the state comes back around to collect a bed tax.

We have a moral requirement to serve the people we represent and, yes, others who want to come here too.

Samuel L. Levin,

Stevens Point

The writer is a former Portage County Board member.

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