By Jenny Kirk
Balaton Press Tribune
Passionate Colonial Manor employees and community members felt the sting of loss and betrayal after the Balaton City Council voted on Monday evening in favor of closing the facility.
A low financial outlook and high debt were noted by the councilmembers as the main reasons for the drastic measure. But for several longtime employees of the town’s lone nursing home, the decision was a slap in the face.
“Every time we tried to say anything, we were told to just do our job,” longtime employee Lois Swanson said. “And now here we are. We probably don’t have a job.”
Swanson and others with knowledge of financial operations inside Colonial Manor of Balaton say they warned city councilmembers for years that its management company, LSI Consulting, and its administrator, Chuck Ness, were showing signs of incompetence, especially regarding proper coding and the timely collection of accounts receivables.
Swanson asked the council why the situation was allowed to go on for so long.
Swanson and others with knowledge of financial operations inside Colonial Manor of Balaton say they warned city councilmembers for years that its management company, LSI Consulting, and its administrator, Chuck Ness, were showing signs of incompetence, especially regarding proper coding and the timely collection of accounts receivables.
Swanson asked the council why the situation was allowed to go on for so long.
“You knew about this four years ago and here we are,” she said. “You wouldn’t do anything about it. You chose to stick you head in the sand, said it’s going to go away. But it’s not.”
Pam Greenfield, who offers hairstyling services to nursing home residents, said the writing was on the wall.
“You know how we got in this position,” Greenfield said. “We hired a management company and they didn’t do their job. They put us in debt and now we have to close. The staff didn’t do anything wrong. But why isn’t the management company accountable for some of this debt? They got us in the hole, with accounts receivable — there are people sitting here that were not billed out for physical therapy. We ate that bill, too.”
See this week’s Headlight Herald for more on this article.