Portage County Board 'pumps the brakes' on Health Care Center sale and sends purchase offer back to committees
STEVENS POINT − Portage County residents will have to wait at least another month to learn the fate of the Portage County Health Care Center following a County Board decision to send a letter of intent from a potential buyer back to the three committees that brought it forward.
The vote follows a month of closed session meetings between the Finance, Space and Properties and Health Care Center committees, which ultimately forwarded a letter of intent from Sam Follman to buy the county-owned skilled nursing facility for about $1.8 million.
“It’s becoming increasingly hard for me to discern what is fact, what is fiction,” District 22 Supervisor Matt Jacowski said before making the motion to send the letter from the potential buyer back to the committees. “That being said, I think this is an opportune time for us to pump the brakes and stop or at least slow.”
Around 40 members of the public were split between the gallery and the overflow room. Public comments from 15 county residents varied in opinions on future county ownership of the facility but almost all focused their comments on their perception of a flawed process in bringing the proposal to the full County Board.
State Rep. Katrina Shankland, who represents Wisconsin's 71st Assembly District, was among the public commenters and highlighted concerns related to the already-passed referendums to fund the facility’s future upgrades and a lack of a standard request for proposal process to seek potential buyers.
Jacowski thanked the public for sharing information and said it would be helpful to send Follman’s letter back to the three committees for further discussion.
"If Mr. Follman cannot afford to wait that long, I wish him all the luck in his future adventures, but I think we as a county need to pump the brakes," Jacowski said.
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Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA-TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Reach him at epfantz@gannett.com or connect with him on X (formerly Twitter) @ErikPfantz.
This article originally appeared on Stevens Point Journal: Portage County Board sends health care center sale offer back to committees
