Selling Walnut Acres will let county focus on other needs
So where do we go from here?
For many years, the county board has spent much of it’s time on one issue, the nursing home. Last month, we approved a Letter of Intent to begin the process of selling the Nursing Home for $1.6M.
At that meeting, I talked about how much time and effort has been put into duplicating nursing home services for 0.1% of the county’s population instead of the things we should be working on for the public. Here’s a partial list:
1. Reducing crime, drugs and gang violence
2. Our county roads and bridges are in serious need of upgrading due to funding — $12M or more behind
3. Countywide fiber optic network — Yes, some of the county has been completed, but we need to expand this further with the fiber to curb and fiber to home programs, which are examples of where we need to get to. Much of this will take long term planning for it to happen but it is essential for this county to reap the benefits for long-distance learning for our students, improved telemedicine for our hospitals, doctors and patients, expanding markets and productivity gains for our local businesses and improving precision agriculture for our farmers.
I have heard a couple of comments that this will never work. Well, here are some prime examples throughout our nation’s history of “it will never work.”
Connecting the railroad across the nation, a horseless carriage (or automobile), expanding electricity to every house in the country, a national freeway system.
Many of these projects took decades to complete, but they all took foresight, planning and especially leadership.
History teaches us that a proper role of government is to coordinate and facilitate efforts to improve and strengthen infrastructure so that our citizens can prosper.
Great leadership is making quality decisions based on a balance of experience, evolving information in a constantly changing environment.
Many years ago, establishing a county nursing home was the right and compassionate thing to do when no other entity was available to meet that need.
However today, that need can and should be met by the private sector and not by the county because it has been proven there are plenty of good, local private nursing homes available and running a nursing home has never been a mandated service we must provide.
So in conclusion, the nursing home/healthcare environment has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, and we must be brave enough to move forward by recognizing that change and stop duplicating services that are not mandated and are no longer needed.
We must sell the nursing home so it can stay open by a private entity, and then the county board can focus more on the things that will strengthen the county as a whole. Thank you for taking time to read this.
Larry Jogerst is a Stephenson County Board member.