The South Park Health Services District, What is it and Who Funds it?

There has been recent talk by the BOCC concerning a new health services district being formed in the Bailey area, more specifically the residents that reside in the Platte Canyon School District, this has been proposed as the Northeast Park County Health District. The BOCC is using the South Park Health Service District (SPHSD) that serves the Alma, Fairplay, Jefferson and Hartsel as a template. The SPHSD is a special district that collects a 1% sales tax to those residents within the specific boundary to provide those residents with health services such as hospitals, convalescent centers, nursing care/intermediate and emergency facilities, community clinics etc.

Recently, I noticed on my Century Link bill a tax charged for the SPHSD, I live in Bailey not even slightly close to the boundary of this special district. The charge was $.54 per month and was going back as far as I could see on my bills, about a year. It was really not that much money, but with the prospect of being taxed on this side of Park County for a health district I thought that I should get this figured out. My first move was to call Century Link (early February) after much discussion trying to convey that I was being charged this tax inappropriately I was told I would need to talk to my County Treasurer. I emailed the County Treasurer and Googled around a bit to see if there were any other methods of resolving this issue. I decided to submit complaints to the FCC, DOR, and the PUC. The FCC responded quickly and looped Century Link in, Century Link said they would look into the situation. The Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR) responded a few weeks later and provided me with a form to submit for a refund. In the meantime I was contacted by the County Treasurer (mid-February), they asked for a copy of my bill and said they were on this and would get back to me, that was the last I heard from them. In late April/early May I received a letter from DORA Public Utilities Commission, I was credited $7.60 to my Century Link bill and the charge was removed from my bill (see file). From start to finish the process took about three months.

DORA resolution May 2023.pdf

Download PDF • 823KB

After this was resolved for me, I started wondering where this money was going. Initially, I thought this would go into a fund managed by the County, nope, its a special district. DOLA provides all the information you need on special districts see that information here: SPHSD . According tho the SPHSD district, they have only had ONE health facility up and running in Fairplay since 2019. In reviewing the budgets of the SPHSD its easy to see that the special health district takes in way more money than it expends; and the actual funds expended on healthcare average about 30% of the income it receives. All the while the fund balance has grown 86% over 5 years resulting in a $2.8 MILLION dollar estimated surplus for 2022.

This begs the question who are they serving and how many people are actually benefiting from this sales tax? With an average of only $277,000 being spent annually on healthcare services (approximately $55 per resident of the service area) is this really impacting the community at all? When you look at the actual numbers it doesn't look like there is a need being fulfilled in the SPHSD. If you subtract all of the residents being charged the SPHSD sales tax inappropriately will that special district continue to exist?

If this is the template for the future Northeast Park County Health District shouldn't we want to see the actual necessity for these services? Wouldn't we want more transparency and efficiency than this?