Opinion: Lincoln County should not sell off Pine Crest Nursing Home

Residents are fighting to keep Pine Crest Nursing Home from being sold to a for-profit buyer.

Pine Crest Nursing Home sits just a few minutes outside of downtown Merrill, right across from the Festival Grounds. I drive by Pine Crest often, but I also make a habit of stopping in. To the delight of the seniors living there, I bring my 10-year-old Newfoundland with me. 

For nearly a century, Pine Crest has been county-owned and has provided a safe home for seniors. Not only is the facility beloved here, but it is also operationally financially solvent — contrary to what some on the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors would want you to believe. 

Some of our elected officials are hellbent on selling Pine Crest to a for-profit buyer, but I am a part of a growing group of Lincoln County residents who are showing up and fighting for Pine Crest to remain county-owned. 

I have seen firsthand how well Pine Crest is run, and this falls in stark contrast to our County Board repeatedly saying it’s unaffordable. I spent years handling finances and reading ledgers when I was employed by Marathon County, so I know my way around local budgets. 

Pine Crest isn’t in the red— in fact, it’s doing rather well. 

The facility ended 2024 with a positive balance of over $550,000. This wasn’t an anomaly: Pine Crest also had a $440,000 positive balance for operations in 2023. The Board of Supervisors knows this because these numbers are public record– in fact, many of them come from County Board minutes and their own Ad Hoc Committee report. 

Healthy numbers like this can be found in county-owned nursing homes throughout Wisconsin. Last month, Dunn County’s nursing home published a $1.3 million surplus for 2024. Similar successes can be seen in Colombia County, St Croix County, Sauk County and more. 

Because community owned nursing homes aren’t looking to make a profit, these surpluses can go toward capital improvements in some counties, refill fund balance accounts, or provide a bit of security for the future. 

It is true that there was a time that Pine Crest was struggling under the stress of COVID and Wisconsin’s unusually low Medicaid reimbursement rate, but 2023 bipartisan legislative action increased Medicaid rates to help solve this problem. Our nursing homes are just starting to feel the impact of this legislative success and it’s already showing up in their books. 

In Lincoln County, however, some Board members continue to insist that they can’t afford Pine Crest. They are leaning on an old trope that things run by the government can’t be efficient, despite the numbers to prove otherwise. Making matters worse, they have been throwing around a number that doesn’t match their own records— $49 million. This number has been quoted in a proposed resolution and repeated by the press.

Forty-nine million sounds insurmountable in a small place like Lincoln County. But we have learned to pull out our calculators when Board Chair Jesse Boyd or the other Supervisors who want to sell Pine Crest toss out numbers. In 2023, the Board introduced a resolution asking for $30 million over ten years for Pine Crest. The next year, they brought a resolution totaling $25 million. When we brought a mathematical error to their attention, they responded that they added an additional million “just in case they needed it.” We suspect they are using these big numbers to fear monger and aren’t searching for a solution. Instead, they are searching for a reason to sell. 

The Lincoln County Board knows full well that people here want Pine Crest to remain community owned. For two years now, local residents have been showing up at their meetings and making public comments opposing its sale. A 2023 community survey conducted by the Merrill Foto News and Tomahawk Leader showed that 83.6% of local respondents opposed selling and People for Pine Crest held a town hall recently and over 150 local residents came out. 

When the Board says they can’t afford Pine Crest, it’s not about finances– it’s about values. While the Board figures out their values, we are clear in ours. We value Pine Crest and our elderly neighbors. That’s why we are going to continue to fight to keep Pine Crest community owned.