Valley View; redo by LaDue or "A Voyage on the OC Circle Line"

Dear Nieces and Nephews, surely you remember the hue and cry of former County Executive Eddie Diana shattering our eardrums with predictions of financial ruin if we kept Valley View as County-owned. It was only back in 2012 when Eddie threatened to close Valley View if the legislators did not agree to sell Valley View by June 7^th of that year. (THR). When that didn’t happen, later in the year he renewed his efforts by stating that the home had a deficit of about 19 Million dollars and should be sold or there will be massive lay-offs. Off course the administrator at the time, William Pacsocello, of OAS (The Chronicle Sep 20, 2012) 

 “offered no solutions for the home that was in his care and agreed it needed to be sold.” 

Why would that be his recommendation? Certainly not because he had right of first refusal!. Another story in the same issue of the Chronicle states: 

“Investigative committee's report finds breach of contract, 'serious questions' about OAS competence” and “At the Sept. 5 meeting of the full legislature, investigative committee member Mike Anagnostakis said the county spent $14 million more than necessary because of OAS mismanagement. ‘An efficiently run facility would cost the county about $6 million annually, rather than the $20 million estimated by Diana’, he said”

And the costs kept rising.

Fast forward almost a year to find the following press release from CGR:

Future of County Nursing Homes in NYS Is in Jeopardy

Donald Pryor, Ph.D. Rochester, New York, August 19,2013

CGR: “A number of cost-saving and revenue-enhancement options were identified as possible ways to both strengthen the Valley View Nursing Home and reduce the operating deficit, potentially by several million dollars per year.  But the likely difficulty of approving and implementing many of the options—along with the fact that even if fully implemented and the potential cost savings and revenue enhancements fully realized, the cumulative effect would still fall far short of closing the annual operating deficit of the Home—led to the conclusion that the most effective means of ensuring the future role of the nursing home and meeting the needs of its residents may be to have the County get out of the direct provision of nursing home care.  Accordingly, we recommended that Orange County put Valley View on the market through the distribution of a Request for Proposals to determine the level of interest in purchasing the facility, subject to meeting the County’s stated goals and expectations of the process.” 

CGR Orange County Valley View Study (Table of Contents)

A. Implement Berger Commission Programmatic Recommendations .................... 100 

One recommendation was: “This option to consider keeping the Parry Building open would need to be evaluated against the present recommendation of the Berger Commission, supported by the County Executive and the Legislature, to demolish the building and use the same space to build the smaller new building to house the expanded adult day care center.”  (pg 106) 

Again, a recommendation to demolish and rebuild unnecessarily, a common theme for anything associated with Phil Clark of Clark Patterson Lee AND CGR but why should you care, it’s not like they are spending YOUR money, is it? It must be someone else’s tax dollars not yours.

Meanwhile, the Berger Commission based part of their report on…. 

"According to the Center for Governmental Research, counties will have an increasingly

difficult time operating their nursing homes as if they were just another department of county

government. Among the options that counties have pursued or considered are the following:

􀂃 Contract for management services to operate the county home

􀂃 Sell licensed beds

􀂃 Convert the home to a public benefit corporation

􀂃 Transfer the home to a not-for-profit corporation or sell to a proprietary corporation." (Pg 83-84 )

So, the CGR report states that Counties should follow the Berger Commission Report and the Berger Commission is basing their recommendations on a CGR Report; it appears that CGR is basically recommending its own recommendations! (And remember, CGR-Centers for Governmental Research is conducting the “co-review” on the KJ Annexation. Maybe they will recommend that The Village of Kiryas Joel follow the recommendations of the county planning department which may be based on the recommendations of the “planners” hired by  KJ: Tim Miller Associates (-more on Tim Miller Associates at a later time). Ah! these Orange County Circuitous reports!

2013/14- After Steve Neuhaus campaigned on keeping Valley View “open” and it became evident that he really wanted to sell it, Stevie Thunder also took the stance that Valley View was costing way too much and needed to be sold or there would be massive lay-offs. (THR 3-19-14) All through 2014 through the illegally established Orange Valley View LDC meetings, chaired by Paul Earn and Whine (Ernenwein), the Nursing Home was a burden of millions of dollars and totally unsustainable! Oh My Goodness, if we don’t sell we will be in complete and utterly unbelievable, agonizing, financial ruin!  A $60 million deficit!!! Throw those VV residents out!!! 

Valley View seemed to have cost anywhere between $19 million to $30 million to operate.  

Now in 2015: we have the headline:Taxpayer cost of Valley View plunges Orange County's subsidy drops by $6.7 million (THR-6-18-15)

“The results plainly surprised the accountants. Anthony Morrone, whose firm has long done Valley View's books and audits both public and private nursing homes across the state, told lawmakers that Valley View's $8 million combined improvement in revenue and expenses in 2014 was "an amazing swing" for a single year, especially when ledger lines hardly budge at other facilities from one year to the next. He said the county had finally capitalized on its opportunities”.

If the accountants that were conducting the audits and keeping the books were surprised, one might wonder at the very least, just how good a job they were doing. Don’t be surprised to see a “back-peddling break-dance” to the tune of “I did what I was told”.

"We were all sitting here, probably two or two and half years ago, and being told that today, two and a half years later, this place would be running at a $30 million cost to the taxpayers, and we're actually seeing what it is," said Anagnostakis, R-Town of Newburgh. "And certain people wanted to continue to steer it in the wrong way to get it up to that $30 million, and that was criminal in my mind."

"Somebody was wasting taxpayers' money, tremendously wasting taxpayers' money," Democratic Leader Chris Eachus said, wondering aloud if a lawsuit might be brought to recover unnecessary spending. 

Let’s go one step further, let’s talk about CRIMINAL CHARGES. 

If millions of dollars were being “spent on Valley View operations when William Pascocello was running Valley View and it did not cost that much to operate it, what happened to those “extra” millions?

"Preet, meet Bill; Bill, hands behind your back. Give us some names and we will make a deal..."

And kudos to Mr. Laurence LaDue for wisely increasing revenues and decreasing expenditures. What a refreshing approach! One that should be applied throughout the county, the nation and the world!

“The county's subsidy for the 360-bed Valley View Center for Nursing Care and Rehabilitation dropped from $15.9 million in 2012 to $9.2 million in 2013, and then to $2.5 million for 2014, according to figures that Valley View's administrator and finance director derived from the home's latest audit. They presented their summary on Tuesday at the Legislature's Health and Mental Health Committee, immediately before a trio of outside accountants met with the committee to discuss the 2014 audit.” (THR-6-18-15)

 

Now will you pay attention, Orange County residents?