By Nick Sodano, Editor
A letter [see below] was mailed to some Mount Holly residents announcing that Virtua Health is holding a public meeting to discuss plans to expand its Mount Holly campus. The meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 4th at 6pm in Virtua’s Mt Holly ground floor conference room.
The letter comes quickly on the heels of a series of town council and planning board meetings that were intent on passing a zoning change to create the new “Health and Life Sciences” zone. That zone now surrounds the hospital. See the Mount Holly Reporter article “Take the Target off My Home”
CONCERNS, WHAT CONCERNS?
Its reasonable that Virtua would be excited about their on-again, off-again expansion that now seems truly on course. But the tone of the letter precludes the possibility of community objections. For instance the letter says “we look forward to your positive responses to the expansion” but makes no mention of addressing any concerns.
TAXES - Mount Holly is a small, built out county seat with lots of tax exempt government buildings and non-profits that don’t contribute much to the tax base. So we struggle with revenue and that brings us to our first concern: how will Virtua offset taxes for all the land it occupies tax free? Or put another way, does Virtua expect Mount Holly residents to pick up the taxes for a facility that will serve residents from many surrounding communities?
SERVICES – Its well known that ER Departments and their patients in crisis are among the heaviest users of police services. Could Virtua perhaps help our town fund its police department?
PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES? – Is there any plan to provide a psychiatric unit in Mount Holly? And if there is, would indigent psychiatric patients who have been judged stable be discharged to the streets of Mount Holly? Would sufficient security be present at such a facility?
NO EMINENT DOMAIN – Can Virtua categorically state that it has not and will not request that Mount Holly declare a redevelopment zone in the areas previously declared the “HL Overlay” zone? While the township has stated that it expects Virtua to approach homeowners to buy property in the former HL Overlay, the township has refused to state that it would not seek to use eminent domain in that location.
A TAX CASE STUDY
Virtua owns about 100 tax lots, much of which used to be tax paying residents or commercial, but is now vacant land. So a lot of money that used to come to our local schools or government is now tax exempt. The Mount Holly Reporter looked at one such property to at least get a sense of how much money is no longer available to our schools and government.
Former commercial buildings - corner of Madison and Bank Avenues.
The former commercial buildings at this corner used to pay over $56,000 per year in taxes according to on line the municipal tax payment service [see below[. But that spot is now vacant land owned by the hospital. If one were to duplicate this process and sum the tax revenue that would have been generated by the approximately 100 tax lots now owned by Virtua, the total goes into the millions over the course of 10 years
This is a Google Street View image of the property noted above in 2018.