MOSES LAKE The effort to recruit employees to fill open positions at Samaritan Healthcare may not bear fruit until 2024. Samaritan Chief Administrative Officer Alex Town said temporary employee expenses have not dropped as much as hospital officials hoped.
MOSES LAKE Samaritan Healthcare voters will be asked to approve or reject a $130 million construction bond request in a special election April 25. Ballots were mailed to voters late last week, according to officials at the Grant County Auditor’s Office.
If the bond is approved, property owners would pay $1.10 per $1,000 of assessed property value. If it’s approved, the owner of land assessed at 250,000 would pay $275 per year, and the owners of property assessed at $300,000 would pay $330 per year.
The bond has a 30-year payback provision.
Samaritan Hospital commissioners voted to approve the construction of a new hospital in October 2018. Chief Executive Officer Theresa Sullivan said that originally district officials and commissioners thought a bond wouldn’t be required to help pay for the project.
On this week’s episode of the Studio Basin podcast, senior reporter Cheryl Schweizer spoke with Samaritan Healthcare's Chief Executive Officer Theresa Sullivan, Chief Administrative Officer Alex Town, and Gretchen Youngren, chief development and communications officer, to discuss the reasons behind the hospital’s request to district voters for a construction bond and what has changed since the project was first approved. They also discussed the cost to property owners and talked about contingency plans if the bond is rejected.