Levy's passage makes hospital's decision sting worse for Xenia

Xenia’s top five employers 2008

Source: Xenia city finance department

XENIA — Councilman Dennis Propes says he’s certain Greene Memorial Hospital wouldn’t have the same voter support this year if it was asking for tax dollars after announcing as many as half the hospital’s workers could relocate to Beavercreek.

“I would have campaigned heavily against it, knowing what I know now,” Propes said, referring to the estimated 500 jobs and half million in income tax dollars the city could lose when the move is made. Beavercreek is one of the few Ohio cities without an earnings tax.

Propes and other county residents who overwhelmingly supported the half-mill levy on Nov. 4, 2008, didn’t know the hospital’s parent company, Kettering Health Network, was finalizing a deal just days before to buy 35-acre hospital site in Beavercreek for $14 million.

The entire campus is expected to cost $135 million, paid for by philanthropic contributions, cash and loans.

The Greene Memorial levy, nicknamed “The Little Levy with the Big Impact” by supporters, won 58 percent of the vote a full year before it was set to expire. It will raise $1.5 million annually until 2014, two years after the Beavercreek hospital is expected to open.

When Greene Memorial Hospital officials pitched the levy to county commissioners, they said it was essential to continuing current service levels in Xenia. The hospital spent more than $130,000 on the levy campaign, according to campaign finance records.

Jim Percival, Xenia city manager, said he hopes the levy dollars will stay with Greene Memorial Hospital, a facility he calls “critical” to the city’s health.

“Any attempt to use levy funds generated by all the voters of Greene County to relocate jobs from one community to another is not a good thing,” Percival said.

Frank Perez, Kettering Health Network president and CEO, said the November 2008 levy was a request to support health care throughout Greene County, not just in Xenia.

“It was a levy approved by the entire citizenship of Greene County,” Perez said. “It will provide better services for all of Greene County.”

Exactly what services will remain in Xenia after the new Beavercreek facility is up and running is still being decided.

Two major hospital functions, surgery and obstetrics, will be relocated to Beavercreek, Kettering officials have said. Remaining in Xenia will be behavioral medicine, cardiac care, long-term care, and an emergency room, Perez said.

Greg Henderson, president of Greene Memorial, said at the Aug. 5 groundbreaking that about half the 1,000 workers could move from Xenia to Beavercreek when the new facility opens.

But Perez said he does not expect a large number of jobs to be lost in Xenia and that Kettering Health Network is committed to growing the facility.

City finance records show 1,018 people are employed on the medical campus. There are 576 workers now in Xenia that are directly employed by the hospital’s parent, Perez said. Of those, he said about 500 will remain in Xenia when the Beavercreek hospital opens in 2012.

Kettering has no control over the other ancillary positions on the hospital’s campus in northern Xenia, according to Perez.

“I don’t believe we will have substantially fewer (workers) than we have today,” Perez said. “We don’t anticipate collateral jobs going away.”

Xenia city leaders are concerned the medical offerings available in Xenia now won’t be there when the Beavercreek hospital opens.

“What it tells me is it will no longer be a full service hospital,” Propes said. “That doesn’t leave us with much.”

Perez says the opposite is true, that Kettering and Greene Memorial need the new Beavercreek facility because 80 percent of residents currently leave the county for medical care.

“This facility will enable a large number of citizens to remain in Greene County, to get care in Greene County and contribute to the economic development of Greene County,” Perez said. “It will improve access of care to the patients in Greene County.”

Perez said the board members of Greene Memorial Hospital brought the idea of a Beavercreek location to Kettering officials.

“That’s where the population is in the county,” he said. “If you want to provide services to the population, you have to be where they are.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDailyNews.com.