"That's what we said we would do with the money and that's what we're doing," said Marianne Clattenburg, chair of the Ways and Means Committee at yesterday's meeting.

It looks like the proceeds of the $15.2 million sale of the nursing home to Premier Healthcare Management LLC is $10,033,000.

The county is also collecting $7 million in unpaid intergovernmental transfers (federal reimbursement for medical expenses for nursing home patients). This money will also be set aside for infrastructure.

There is still some wrangling with insurance companies, said Treasure Scott German, over money the companies think they are owned and money the county think it is due. There may be additional minor expenses to close out, but those payments will be handled through the general fund.

In other words, the budget line for the nursing home in the county's expense ledger is now officially closed.

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The sale of the Genesee County Nursing Home to Premier Healthcare Management, LLC is complete after state regulators cleared the way for transfer of title. 

The county has received payment in full in the $15.2 million transaction, Gsell said.

The agreement will allow Premier Healthcare Management LLC to take over management of the nursing home on Jan. 1.

The county expected to be out of the nursing home business by midnight Dec. 31, so it canceled all of its third-party contracts related to the nursing home effective the last day of the year and told all county employees at the nursing home that they were going off the county's payroll.

This latest wrinkle in the sale process, therefore, caused a bit of turmoil among county officials, said Ray Cianfrini, chairman of the Legislature.

"The fact that this came up at the last minute is disconcerting to all of us," Cianfrini said.

The surprise twist in the plot isn't expected to change the eventual outcome of the sale, Cianfrini said. Officials believe the sale will go through by Jan. 15, but if it doesn't, Premier will pay the county $5,000 per month in rent for January and February. If the deal doesn't close by Feb. 28, rent payments go up to $50,000 a month.

Essentially, Cianfrini said, the health department is trying to nail down assurances that Premier isn't going to acquire the nursing home and the flip it to another buyer who will convert the building into condominiums.

That apparently happened in New York City not long ago, Cianfrini said, so the state is leery of a repeat scenario. Cianfrini doesn't think that is Premier's intention. He said Premier seems intent on establishing a strong presence in Western New York, where it's finding it easier to do business than in NYC.

Premier agreed to pay $15 million to the county to acquire the nursing home, which has been running in the red as a county operation for a decade, with deficits hitting as high as $2 million a year. Premier has already transferred $1.5 million to the county and has agreed to pay another $200,000, which is money the county will keep if the deal, for some reason, doesn't go through.

Without the close, the county would need to include nearly $16 million in expenses and offsetting revenue in the budget.

Back in May, the NYS Health Department approved the certificate of need ("CoN" -- a kind of license) 160-bed care facility, but officials had gotten no word on the other CoN for the 80-bed adult home.

All along, Gsell felt the sale would be finalized before the end of the year, but without final approval, there was no way to count on it.

Yesterday, an executive with the prospective Nursing Home buyer, Premier Health LLC, got a phone call from a state official saying the certificate of need was approved and an official letter should be dropped in the mail today.

"At least now we have a very good sense that this is actually going to happen in the calendar year 2016," Gsell said.

Once the letter is in hand, both sides can start working on the details of closing the sale, including transferring employees and contractors, completing paperwork, and finalizing how to handle accounts receivable, among other details.

That will be a three- or four-week process, Gsell said.

The county will get about $15 million for the nursing home, but after expenses, only about 25 percent of those proceeds will be available for either the general fund or the capital fund.

Gsell was able to share the good news with legislators yesterday during a budget work session.

There were no decisions that came out of yesterday's budget discussion. The legislators have a 292-page, $141 million budget to pore through as they grapple with their options for the tax rate, deficit spending or any big spending cuts that they might make.

Gsell's budget is balanced, but it requires pulling $1 million from reserve funds and reallocating sales tax revenue from future road and bridge repairs to the 2017 general fund.

A $15 million increase in assessed value, of which about $7 million is taxable, for properties in the county, makes the break-even tax rate for the 2016 vs. 2017 tax levy at $9.66 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

Gsell's budget proposal increases the tax levy by $645,000, the maximum increase under the state's tax cap law.

That would set the 2017 property tax rate from the county at $9.76 per thousand of assessed value, or 10 cents lower than 2016.

The Legislature will consider whether to pass a resolution authorizing them to override the tax cap limit to raise taxes. Because of timing and budget deadline issues, the resolution will need to be passed before they even get to the point of deciding what the tax rate should be.

It's a policy decision for the legislature whether to accept Gsell's budget as proposed, raise taxes to reduce deficit spending, or make significant cuts in non-mandated services, such as parks and law enforcement.

Getting disentangled from the white elephant of a facility will take months and cost millions of dollars.

"The costs don't stop on the day of the sale," said County Manager Jay Gsell.

The revenue to the county, as insufficient as it's been for the past decade, stops the day Premier takes over, but some of the costs will drag out, such as final payments to employees' retirement accounts, paying out unclaimed vacations and leaves, paying ongoing workers comp claims, closing out obligations for patient care, among other expenses.

It could be at least a year before the county knows how much of that $15.2 million is left over after all of the expenses are covered.

Right now, best guess, those expenses will eat up at least 75 percent of the sale price, Gsell said.

It will be up to the county legislature to decide what to do with the balance, whether put it back into the general fund, put it into roads and bridges or toward building a new jail.

There are also unpaid bills from patients to be collected. The floating balance of unpaid bills, called accounts receivable, is about $1.3 million.

The county will need to make a decision on how to handle those accounts, whether sell them to Premier at a discount or assign staff -- perhaps more than one staff member, plus attorney time -- to try and collect those payments, or the accounts could be turned over to a contractor for collection. An accountant with Freed Maxick  is working to determine which option might be best for the county.

The county is also owed money from the federal government, which passes through the state, called IGT funds. This money is designed to help county governments fill the gap between revenue and expenses on facilities such as the nursing home. That is money owed the county for expenses already incurred, but by law, the money must be paid to the nursing home, so Premier will need to transfer the money to the county, once the funds are received.

Whatever the final "net proceeds" from the sale might be, the county will never be able to claim it made a "profit" on the sale, Gsell said.  

The sale will close after Premier receives its second regulatory approval, called a certificate of need, from the state's Health Department. One has been approved, for the skilled nursing home, but the other, for the adult home, is still pending.

Gsell expects the deal to close in the fall, meaning between Oct. 1 and the first day of winter.

The nursing home has been bleeding money from the county's general fund for the last 10 years, and to a tune of more than $2.5 million a year for the past five. Those are deficits on operations that will never be recovered.

"We will never be able to use the word 'profit' when it comes to the Genesee County Nursing Home," Gsell said. "That equation has left the building."

The final details of the contract still have to be finished and signed by the legislature. As an alternative until the contract is finalized, the legislature has issued a letter of intent for the sale and transfer of Genesee County Skilled Nursing Facility and Genesee County Adult Home.

The letter of intent is needed so Premier can meet the Department of Health's application deadline for licenses and certificates of need. The entire process can take anywhere from six to nine months.

Premier owns several nursing home facilities and is a well known for-profit healthcare corporation in New York.

"There will be no reduction in the quality of care at our nursing home, which is our biggest concern,” Legislature Chairman Ray Cianfrini said. “The fact that they can do it at a profit is something I give them credit for. They have a different set of parameters that they work within that allows them to do that. This is not the only nursing home they own so they have the economy of scale they can use to make profits. That doesn't bother me at all."

Members of the legislature were impressed after touring their facilities and talking with residents.

Legislator Marianne Clattenburg said she believes Premier can provide advancements to the nursing home that the county couldn’t do.

“What struck me was their willingness to make investments,” Clattenburg said. “We saw one facility that had a multimillion-dollar dialysis unit installed after they had taken over the building.”

Finding a qualified buyer for the nursing home has been an extensive process.

“It was a long thorough process,” said Legislator Frank Ferrando Jr.. “Right from the beginning nothing happened rashly or quickly. Places were visited and questions were asked. We interviewed eight from a list of 14 that were original applicants. I’m very confident this is going to be a real plus for our community.”

When the contract is finalized, Premier plans to seek community input and will hold community meetings and forums for families and employees.

According to county officials, after debts are paid the county hopes to net $6.7 million from the sale.

The county received eight purchase proposals, Gsell said, and the recommended buyer is not only well qualified but also submitted the highest bid.

The details of the purchase agreement are not yet public and more details should be available when the Legislature meets in a special Committee of the Whole Meeting following the 4:30 p.m. Ways and Means Committee meeting Wednesday, in the Old Courthouse.

For years, county officials have maintained the nursing home is a multimillion-dollar drain on the county's budget and that state officials have been maneuvering counties toward the sale of such facilities by strangling state aid. Financial disclosures provided to potential buyers show the nursing home's losses have been piling up, with losses of $2.9 million in 2011, $3.7 in 2012 and $4.3 million in 2013.

A non-government agency (whether a not-for-profit group or for-profit company) will have greater flexibility in generating revenue than the highly regulated government-owned facility, plus have greater leeway in reducing expenses, and it won't be facing a squeeze on funding from the State of New York, according to county officials.

The anticipated vote by the Legislature is just the first step in a long process that could last up to nine months to complete the sale.

While Gsell said legislators have been doing their due diligence to ensure the anticipated buyer is qualified, the state has its own investigative process before it will OK transferring what's called a "certificate of need" to the new owner. The nursing home has two such certificates.

"At this point, with the deadlines the state has on financing nursing homes, especially adult operations like we have, the Legislature would like to start that process now," Gsell said. "The state conducts what it calls a character and compliance review and that could take six to nine months. That's what other counties have been through, including our neighbor to the north."

While Gsell would not at this time disclose the name of the buyer, citing purchase agreement restrictions, he said it is a company based in New York. That's one of the details that could be made public Wednesday.

For previous nursing home coverage, click here.

The flu virus has been detected among patients in the Genesee County Nursing Home and some staff members are also beginning to show symptoms.

Due to the contagious nature of the flu, visitors will not be allowed at the facility until further notice.

The flu is very hazardous to the elderly and should not be taken lightly, officials said.

The nursing home is working with the New York State Department of Health to limit the spread of the virus. Families should contact their Social Workers with any questions.

Interested buyers have until Sept. 23 to submit a letter of intent and until Oct. 6 to submit proposals.

So far, some 25 to 30 potential buyers have expressed interest in the nursing home, County Manager Jay Gsell said, but there's still just the one written intent to submit a bid.

The nursing home has been dragging down county finances for years, and financial disclosures included in the RFP package show the facility losing $2.9 million in 2011, $3.7 in 2012 and $4.3 million in 2013.

A non-government agency (whether a not-for-profit group or for-profit company) will have greater flexibility in generating revenue than the highly regulated government-owned facility, have greater leeway in reducing expenses, and won't be facing a squeeze on funding from the State of New York, according to county officials.

The county Legislature decided to sell the home to escape the ongoing financial drain on the budget.

The RFP states the facility will be sold to the most qualified, responsible bidder who meets a range of criteria. The highest bid won't necessarily win the purchase contract.

The current assessed value of the nursing home, on Bank Street, is $10.9 million.

Of course, currently no taxes are collected on the government-owned property.

Serious bidders will be invited to pre-proposal site visits Sept. 24, 25, 26 and 29.

Bids must include a $100,000 refundable deposit and provide financial statements and a letter of credit indicating not only the ability to close on the final purchase price, but to operate the facility at the current level or improved level of services after the purchase is completed.

The purchaser will be prohibited from involuntarily transferring or evicting any current resident of the nursing home.

Bidders must agree that the RFP process is subjective and the Legislature has the final say on whether to accept or reject any and all bids, and the county reserves to right to enter into negotiations with a bidder to modify a proposal.

The company must provide a company history, executive bios, information and qualifications on employees, experience with similar facilities, and plan for a smooth transfer of ownership.

There will be no public bid opening and bids won't become public until after a proposal is accepted by the Legislature. It's up to the company to declare any portion of the proposal that would be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law.

The sale of the nursing home has generated a little public opposition. There is a "Save the Genesee County Nursing home in Batavia NY" group on Facebook with 166 members currently.

The complete RFP package is available on the county's Web site.