Neillsville City Counci Approves First Steps in Acquiring $1.5 Million Loan for Memorial Medical Center
Wednesday, May 28th, 2014 -- 8:17 AM
-The Neillsville City Council has approved the city to proceed in acquiring a $1.5 million loan for Memorial Medical Center.Over the past couple months, Memorial Medical Center?s CEO, Ryan Neville, CFO, Roger Sneath, and Board President, Gary Weirauch, have been appearing before the city?s Economic Development Commission asking them to consider sending this proposal before the common council.
This money will be used to not only purchase, as Mr. Weirauch put it, ?bare-bones upgrades? to their equipment and facility for 2014, but it will also be used to rebuild their cash reserves. Part of the reason MMC cannot acquire this loan on their own is because they don?t have those reserves. Mr. Weirauch said that the hospital?s cash reserve is going up and for the month of April, they only had a cash burn of $22,000. They?re expecting it to be positive in May.
Neillsville Mayor Steve Mabie read a prepared statement in which he fully endorsed having the council approve the beginning steps in obtaining this loan and each member of the council agreed that MMC has a significant impact on the local economy.
In the end, 4 of the 5 council members voted yes. Jerry Quicker abstained from the vote as he has a connection with MMC being on the hospital?s foundation board. The city will now go out and get bids for the loan and they will then loan that money to MMC, if the city is approved.
This loan is expected to have a term of 10 years and MMC would repay the loan by using semi-annual payments of $89,500 twice each year. The hospital doesn?t want the taxpayers of Neillsville to worry because they have $9.5 million worth of collateral for the loan.
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