The Telluride Hospital District announced Thursday that it will seek a $15 million bond from voters this November to help build a $40 million facility.

This ends talk of the district waiting a year for a better economy and a ballot with fewer bonds requests on it.

This November, the town of Telluride will seek $12 million to fix the pock-marked Spur; the school board plans a multi-million dollar expansion with eight new classrooms, teacher housing and other projects; and childcare advocates may seek money for a preschool.

“The community needs a new medical center, and we want to give it to them,” said board member Pamela Sante. “We have things in the works … we need to move forward with site planning. And right now, we don’t have the money we need.”

The bond will go toward what board members say will be a $40 million facility located on the west end of town near the Shandoka apartment complex, just off Mahoney Drive.

If passed, the $15 million bond, with a repayment over time of $24 million, will raise taxes throughout the hospital district by $1.2 million annually. That breaks down to about $125 a year for every $1 million of value in a home. But under state law, every $1 a homeowner pays to finance a bond can inflate to $3 for a commercial owner.

The board moved forward with the ballot question on the back of a favorable study.
The telephone survey, conducted by Harstad Strategic Research, Inc., was paid for by RBC, the company who would underwrite the district’s bond, said Margaret Matthews, an independent contractor with the Telluride Medical center.

The survey asked 305 voters within the hospital district a number of questions but the most telling was also the most simple: If voters knew the bond would raise property taxes would they vote for the new facility?

Seventy-one percent answered yes, with a split down the middle on a “probably yes” vote and a “defiantly yes” vote.

The wording of that question, though, didn’t ask about the myriad other measures whose waves will break on this fall’s ballot.

Still, board members aren’t worried.

“We’re not after today’s report from our bond underwriter,” said board member Albert Roer.

The hospital district has looked to expand for years. It’s currently located in a 9,000 square foot building on Pacific Avenue it leases which is tiny and dated and cannot offer the space for proper emergency services, hospital officials say.

The new plan will plop most of the a facility on the RV Lot, a vacant parking lot in the west of town next to the Shandoka and Creekside apartments. Part of that property, though, lies on the Pearl Property, a swath of land acquired by the town and zoned as open space that’s been protected by town voters more than once.

That makes the Hospital District’s ballot proposals read like a three part question that spans two different voting districts.

First, town of Telluride voters will have to approve the sale of the RV Lot from the town to the hospital district. That sale is planned for $4 million, as of Thursday, for the one-acre plot. Then, town voters will have to grant permission for a sliver of Pearl to be built upon, though the lion’s share of that portion is currently a parking lot, save a 5-foot section of the building’s planned northeast corner.

Then, Hospital District voters will have to approve the $15 million in bonds.

“I think the biggest challenge will be educating the public,” said board member Kate Wadley.

The board voted unanimously in support of pushing the bond forward minus board president Bill Grun, who was absent at that part of the meeting.

If the bond passes, the Telluride Hospital District will seek some $25 million more in private funding to build the $40 million facility, Matthews said.