COURTESY : Orlando Sentinel

By Lisa Emmerich
Published October13, 2004 

THE VILLAGES - Ever since a 60-bed hospital opened to serve Central Florida's largest concentration of retirees two years ago, developers have been jumping through hoops to find a way to expand the facility.

Thanks to the influence of Gary Morse, developer of the giant Villages retirement community and one of President Bush's biggest contributors, backers of The Villages Regional Hospital had enough power to help earn an exemption from state laws regulating expansion and to successfully push for elimination of those regulations altogether.

But their clout stopped at the very people they say they're trying to help: Villages residents.

Sumter County voters halted the expansion when they soundly defeated a measure last week to fund a major hospital expansion through a new property tax that would cost the owner of a $150,000 home with a $25,000 homestead exemption $125 a year. Nearly 75 percent of the area's 17,000 voters cast their ballot against the tax.

"I'm disappointed," said Villages Regional Hospital CEO Tim Menton. "We knew we had an uphill challenge to try to get it passed, and it was clear from the vote that the community didn't support it in the current form."

Occupancy rates as high as 110 percent have choked the hospital in recent weeks, demonstrating the need for expansion and increasing residents' concern that they will be under-served during the winter, when snowbirds significantly increase the area's population.

The Villages, which straddles Lake, Marion and Sumter counties, sells more than 250 new homes each month, making it the fastest-growing planned community in the country. Marketing materials for the development tout a full-service hospital, but as new residents move to the community in droves the hospital becomes less adequate.

The hospital is owned by Leesburg Regional Medical Center and operated in cooperation with Villages' developers. LRMC officials say they can't pay outright for the hospital to expand. The tax would have funded an additional 180 beds, bringing the facility to 240 beds in about three years.

The Villages Property Owners' Association did not support the referendum. Its president, Joe Gorman, said LRMC should not force residents to shoulder the burden for their company's expansion. Gorman blamed the problem on LRMC's financial condition, saying the company should sell the hospital to a company able to fund the expansion.

"People are going to die in the next two years because they can't get to an expanded facility," he said. "For them to delay the hospital expansion is, I think, unethical."

Menton said LRMC provided $16 million as a down payment for the expansion, but the Villages hospital has to come up with enough money to fund payments on a $100 million, 30-year loan. That means using money the hospital makes each year and money from area residents, Menton said.

"There's not any magic to complete it," he said. "There have to be all the pieces there for us to move forward."

University of Florida Professor Paul Duncan said taxes such as the one shot down in The Villages have historically been well received in Florida.

"It used to be that for certain kinds of services -- parks, things for children, hospitals -- communities had a reasonable shot that they could convince the voters that it was a good investment," Duncan said. "But when you ask people to tax themselves, that's an uphill battle. Period."

Duncan said he was surprised the plan was voted down by a 3-1 margin in a community where the developer has a reputation of influence. Now hospital officials say they're rethinking the tax, which would have cost residents $1 per $1,000 of taxable property value. The referendum did not give the tax a sunset date and also would have allowed hospital officials to use funds for running the hospital and not exclusively for the expansion.

Rena Marchand, who sits on the hospital tax district board that would levy an approved tax, knows firsthand how badly Villages Regional needs to expand -- she waited four hours for a hospital room there two months ago when she needed a gall-bladder operation. She said board members failed to educate the public about the specifics of the referendum.

"This community is growing -- we're going to double in the next five years," said Marchand, 54. "Already, there's not enough beds. If you look at the national sizing statistics, this should be a 400-bed hospital by the time we reach 80,000 people. The only way it's going to happen is if people pony up and give their share."