Scott,

I understand your thoughts on how well managed county government has been.  This has always been a problem at Mount View.  Every time Mount View wants to make changes to get into the 21st century, they must go through much red tape.  If Mount View was able to make changes like a private facility, without legislative approval, the facility would be able to keep up with changing times.  For example, ten years ago the employees wanted to get into rehabilitating patients because of the decline in long term care residents.  When this was brought to the legislators, it was never acted upon until one year ago.  By this time, many other private facilities were already providing this service.  Approximately five years ago it was brought to the legislators to build cottages to try to change the hospital setting style nursing home which would have made Mount View more attractive to the families of long term care residents.  This was also tabled by our legislators.  This same concept Mr. Marchi took to another county and as I said before was praised for this idea.  This idea of cottages came from the National Nursing Home Magazine which portrays the changes being made by nursing homes to establish a more home like atmosphere which, in turn, makes the facility attract and maintain residents.  The legislators have been in the process of closing Mount View over the last ten years.  At Mount View they had an enterprise fund in excess of $7 million dollars that the legislators have been bleeding out of the facility over this time period to balance their county budget.  This is why Mount View has no money to fall back on at this time.  This money was set aside as a cushion by Administrator, Mr. Majka, because he knew the time was coming that the number of long term care residents would decrease until the baby boomers started using long term care facilities.  Figures show that when baby boomers start entering long term care facilities, there will not be enough beds which will cause private facilities to pick and choose what residents they admit.  At this time, private facilities will choose private pay or well insured residents over medicare residents to increase profit.  This will leave medicare patients in hospitals at a much higher cost to the state waiting for placement. At that time, they will start placing patients up to 50 miles away from their home and family to reduce their cost. This is why Mount View needs to stay a County run facility, to secure Niagara County's low income elderly a place to live and be properly cared for when they need it.

The company that has placed a bid to purchase Mount View has stated that they will keep the residents and employees for two years.  After this two years is up, they will get very selective about residents that they admit to keep their profit margin up.  As for the employees with over 10 years of employment with the county, they will not be able to transfer to this new company without losing their state retirement and medical benefits guaranteed by their bargining agreement.  This would be like them starting over again.

As for you stating that government should not be in the business of running businesses that can be run in the private sector, you seem to be contradicting yourself when it comes to Social Security.  You are in favor of the government handling your Social Security where this can be done in the private sector.  We know how well our government handles money.

Keyman