MONTICELLO, NY — The Sullivan County Adult Care Center, which is the county-owned nursing home in Liberty, was a topic of discussion at a meeting at the government center on October 2. It was announced that the facility has a new administrator named Shennoy Wellington.

Members of the Family Council, an advocacy group for residents of the facility, turned out to make a few points about the facility. Jim Dirie, a former president of the council, said that the county needs to advertise the facility, especially now that it has added a secure Alzheimer’s and dementia unit, the only one in Sullivan County, and a rehab unit has also been added.

Dirie said that some people living in the western part of the county aren’t aware that the facility exists.

He also asked that the county commit to at least a five-year moratorium on considering a sale of the facility, although at the present, there is no consideration of such a sale.

Randy Parker, the commissioner of the Sullivan County Division of Health and Family Services, said a marketing outreach coordinator had been hired and a comprehensive marketing plan was being developed.

Elsewhere in the state, many counties have sold off or privatized their county-owned nursing homes.

In Orange County, there has long been a push to privatize the nursing home. In Delaware County, the county-owned facility was sold to a private owner in 2006 and was closed by the state in 2012 because of numerous violations.

At least 11 counties outside of New York City have sold their publicly-owned nursing homes since 1997.

According to a 2013 report by the Center for Governmental Research, much of the cost of operating a publicly-owned nursing home in New York State is related to “high costs of employee benefits, largely due to health insurance and pension costs. Median employee benefit costs per resident day in county-owned homes rose 181% in the 10 years ending in 2010.”

The report also said, “In 2010, 92% of the county homes in the state lost money, with median losses per resident day doubling since 2006 and quadrupling since 2001. County homes are rapidly losing market share to non-public homes, particularly to for-profit providers.”

Sullivan legislators hope to enhance revenue with the recent improvements.

Solar power planned

In other news about the Adult Care Center, the county announced that a new solar farm will be constructed at the facility and will be capable of providing most if not all of the electricity used by the center.

SolarCity Corporation will develop the project and sell electricity to the county at a reduced rate, saving the county an estimated $75,000 per year.

The Sullivan Alliance for Sustainable Development (SASD), working through the Sullivan County Office of Sustainable Energy, had earlier identified the Adult Care Center as a major consumer of electricity and the site as an optimal one for a large-scale solar array, both because of the acreage available and the electricity demand at the site.

The research was included in the Climate Action Plan that SASD drafted for the county (which was formally adopted by the County Legislature in April), which recommended the pursuit of power-purchase agreements for renewable-energy installations at county facilities.