WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Something town of Massena officials didn’t want to happen did. After transferring Massena Memorial Hospital to St. Lawrence Health System, it didn’t wipe out debt that town officials hoped would go away.
While the town no longer owns Massena Memorial, it still is carrying millions of dollars of debt from when it did.
A just-released 2020 audit of the town shows after the town transferred the hospital to St. Lawrence Health System, the town took on $9.3 million in debt and it could leave the town taxpayers on the hook.
Former Massena town supervisor, Steve O’Shaughnessy, said four million of that has been paid off, leaving five million dollars of the debt still on the town’s books.
The money is owed to the New York state pension fund because when the town ran the hospital, the employees were public sector workers and eligible for state retirement.
O’Shaughnessy had hoped for an answer to the current debt by now.
“We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping that, before I left office, we were working with Senator (Joe) Griffo and Assemblyman (Mark) Walczyk to try and get some grant money to help pay for that or loan forgiveness from the New York state retirement,” he said.
What does $9 million mean for the town of Massena? In order to pay off the debt, residents would have to pay $700 each.
Of course, that’s not the way this works, and town officials are coming up with realistic ways to pay off the $9 million, including a possible tax on property owners for the next 20 years.
“We’re all concerned about our taxpayers and making sure we do what we can for the benefit of the taxpayers. We’ve all attended a lot of budget classes ourselves for understanding budget practice, fiscal oversight, internal control which continues to appear,” said Massena Town Supervisor Sue Bellor.
In the end, both Bellor and O’Shaughnessy point out that Massena still has a hospital and hundreds of people are still employed. But now we know at what cost.
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