In the coming weeks the seven Indian River County Hospital District trustees will evaluate local agency funding applications totaling $21 million.  But before they fall in love with too many causes and programs, the trustees must set a hard spending cap that will bring the district’s tax rate down.

That’s not the way the process currently works, and it shows in the Hospital District’s soaring annual budget.

Last year, trustees approved a 61 percent increase in the property taxes collected for the Hospital District. Instead of setting a spending cap, they raised the tax rate to fit the $18.9 million for programs they wanted to fund, with expanding overhead bringing total expenditures to $22 million.

On top of that, the Hospital District dipped into its reserves for mid-year spending, including nearly $4 million to purchase an abandoned property for a planned sober home – a handyman special that taxpayers are now stuck with.

This year, taxpayers must demand a course correction and a major property tax reduction when the Hospital District trustees meet in June.

A 15 percent decrease in the district’s overall annual budget would bring total spending to just under $19 million. That would still be a half-million increase over what the district voted to spend in 2023-24, but a big improvement from current-year spending of $22 million.

With looming threats to property taxes at the state level, and no alternative sources of Hospital District funding, this is not the year for a special taxing district to gobble up as much cash as possible before the laws change. It’s a year to scale back, to prioritize needs over wants, and to take a more conservative approach to spending property tax revenue.

The reason why homeowners’ and politicians’ cries for property tax relief are growing so loud is because government entities across Florida, by and large, have not acted judiciously as soaring property values presented a windfall opportunity.

Instead, they have increased taxes, cranked up spending and embarked upon idiotic purchases like a $4 million sober home – without a sound, sober plan for operating it. Local governments and taxing districts got drunk on double-digit property value increases each year since the Covid pandemic drove millions of people to the Sunshine State, and thousands to Indian River County.

In 2019, the year Cleveland Clinic took over Indian River Hospital, the Hospital District only spent $14.9 million, and more than half of that, a full $7.7 million, went for indigent care delivered through the hospital.

Unchained from the vast majority of that indigent care burden by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and its philanthropy, the Hospital District could have sharply reduced its annual budget.

But why do that? County property owners were accustomed to paying those hospital district taxes. And nobody attends the district meetings or pays much attention to what the Hospital District does with the money it collects. So the trustees found other uses for the money, and nonprofits and pet projects flocked to them for funding.

In 2020, the district’s budget increased by $200,000 to $15.1 million.

Grants to funded agencies mushroomed. The Healthy Start Coalition got $245,000, up from $103,000 the prior year. Tykes and Teens got $135,000, up from $25,000 the prior year. Whole Family Health got $531,000, up from $300,000 the prior year. A newly funded program called Phoenix Rising got $220,000.

Treasure Coast Community Health got an extra $75,000. Other organizations got an extra $50,000 or $25,000 or $10,000.

The Hospital District, unchained from much of its previous $7.7 million annual burden of paying for indigent care at Indian River Hospital, tamped its spending down to $13.3 million in 2021. A slight cut from the pandemic frenzy, but that temporary temperance did not last.

In 2022 the district spent $15 million. Then $18.5 million in 2023. Then last summer the district budget took a huge jump from $18.5 million to $22 million.

As more grants and more programs were added through mission creep, more and better-qualified staff were needed to manage the Hospital District grant-making operation. More legal questions arose as the district got in the business of buying and selling real estate. Overhead expenses rose 28 percent from $1.14 million in 2019 to $1.46 million in the current fiscal year.

Salaries went from $292,000 in 2019 to $495,000 currently. Legal expenses went from $73,000 annually to $175,000. Outside professional services from consultants ballooned from $6,000 to $137,000.

It’s time for meaningful spending cuts at the Indian River County Hospital District, and for trustees to focus on the district’s core mission – not on a wish list.

District trustees have until June 13 to evaluate the funding applications and make recommendations on which to approve. Then at the district’s Chairman’s Meeting on June 18, they will begin to talk about the budget for the coming year.

Executive Director Frank Isele said at a May 8 special call meeting, “Typically, at that June meeting, we're going to have a draft budget. Because in July, you all have to adopt a tentative budget at the regular meeting.”

Most Hospital District business and decision making occurs at the Wednesday morning Chairman’s Meetings held at district headquarters – not at the televised monthly Business Meeting in the County Commission chambers the next day on Thursday afternoons. No video replays are available of the Chairman’s Meetings, but the public can attend the live meeting remotely by Zoom.

Trustees may be contacted via their district email accounts listed at www.irchd.com on the About Us page, Trustees tab.