Voters approve $33 mln hospital bond issue

Voters overwhelmingly approved a $33-million bond issue to replace Olney’s 60-year-old hospital building, turning out at a rate higher than the state average in the Nov. 7 election.

The bond measure received support from 66 percent of voters, a margin “that was a great vote of confidence,” said Dale Lovett, Olney Hamilton Hospital board chairman.

The OHH board meets next Friday to canvas the 700 votes cast in the Proposition A race, and to kick-start the planning and construction process with the Guide Architecture of Dallas and Trinity Hughes Construction of Wichita Falls, Mr. Lovett said.

“The meeting next Friday tells our bond council that they can go out and sell the bonds to acquire the money [for the hospital],” Mr. Lovett said. “The architects and the builder have already been in communication … they have an initial plan based on their research and now they will start putting the plans into blueprints.”

OHH administrators will begin fine-tuning the vision of modernizing the hospital to handle more outpatient care and procedures by consulting with the medical staff, he said.

If all goes as planned, OHH will break ground on the new facility in the first quarter of 2024, and complete it in about 18 months, Mr. Lovett said.

“We have spent a couple of years planning and dreaming and strategizing and now we are ready to start putting those dreams to pen and paper,” he said. “We, the board, appreciate so much the vote of support and confidence in what we are doing and how we are doing it. Their votes tell us that they trust us and they believe in what we are doing. That is really what speaks to us … let’s use that trust they have in us and move forward.”

The hospital is nationally recognized as a top performing U.S. hospital as well as the oldest continuously operating rural hospital in Texas.

The OHH board voted unanimously to use new tax revenue from local wind farms and an incoming hydrogen plant to pay down the proposed bonds. The board determined it would cost more to update the 1964-era building to accommodate new outpatient-centered business, as well as new operating and procedure rooms, than to start from scratch.

Although OHH’s plan is to use tax revenue from local wind farms and the Plug Power hydrogen plant to pay off the 30year general obligation bonds, residents of the hospital taxing district in Olney and Newcastle had to approve sales of the bonds.

The new hospital will be built across Hamilton Street from the existing facility.