San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
A payday for Baptist Health System
Officials plan to nominate four hospitals for state tax refunds after Texas Vista closed
On the heels of Texas Vista’s closure, the city and county are working to bolster an existing hospital system through a potential state sales tax refund.
The City Council has signed off on Bexar County’s plan to nominate four Baptist Health System hospitals for the Texas Enterprise Zone Program — the first time county officials have pursued such a designation for an area hospital system.
The program would provide each hospital up to $1.25 million in state sales and use tax refunds over five years at no cost to the city or county. The state allows cities and counties with populations of 250,000 or more to make nine designations every two years.
“From the county’s perspective, working in collaboration with our hospital systems to help them stay strong and profitable and provide those services that are needed across the community is the primary driver behind our support for this,” Bexar County Economic and Community Development Director David Marquez told the council last week.
A handful of council members were critical of the relatively low number of new jobs that would be created through the program — about 80 full-time positions across the four hospitals: Baptist Medical Center, Mission Trail Baptist Hospital, Northeast Baptist Hospital and North Central Baptist Hospital.
These hospitals currently have about 3,500 full-time employees, according to city documents.
The goal of this nomination, Marquez explained, is to encourage “retention and expansion.”
“We’ve seen already the South Side lose a facility there; certainly, the county is concerned about that,” he said, referencing the
May 1 closure of Texas Vista Medical Center, one of two major hospitals in the southernmost third of the city, aside from Mission Trail Baptist Hospital.
Baptist Health System plans to make $55 million in capital investments across the four hospitals, including additional women's services beds at the Mission Trail location.
“As I view it, growth of the hospital facilities and ability to pay for those improvements is vital for all of us, and so the designation is sound,” Mayor Ron
Nirenberg said.
Though the county will submit the four individual designations — county commissioners will be asked to approve them on July 11 — the city was required to sign off because the hospitals are located within San Antonio. It did so on Thursday.
Were the state to accept any of them, they would count toward the county's nine allowable designations for the 20232025 period.
Bexar County's active enterprise zone designations are Charter Communications, GreatCall and Toyotetsu Texas.