AMERICAN FALLS — The Power County Hospital is in a state of rehabilitation.

In one section, fresh new rooms provide nursing home occupants with more space and privacy, something previously unavailable when they were sharing with roommates a year ago. In another section, an unfinished ceiling exposes the veins of electrical wires and the water pipes of the building, waiting to be tended to.

In 2016, the county passed a bond that would provide the Power County Hospital, which is nearing its sixtieth birthday, with updates and renovations it hasn’t seen during its lifetime.

Yet when the board of directors’ inflation budget of 5% unexpectedly escalated to 25% due to economic changes and construction increases, the hospital found it was $2.95 million short of completing its operation. And with November’s county election bond failing to pass with the needed two-thirds majority vote, the hospital has found itself in a bit of a rut.

“It was a huge jump I don’t think anyone in the area could anticipate,” said Jacklyn Taylor, the marketing and foundation director and administrative assistant for the hospital. “But it’s needed to finish the original project. We’re not trying to tack on any additional things like that, it’s just the cost increased that much to finish everything we wanted in the original.”

Currently, the hospital is undergoing renovations that have and will continue to update several aspects of the building. Some of these include a new helipad and emergency room, extra parking spaces, a facelift in the nursing home residence, and single-occupant patient rooms with their own bathrooms.

“When it was built back in 61’ you were supposed to have roommates, supposed to have two beds in there, and none of (the patient rooms) have that anymore,” Taylor said. “This expansion helped us put full bathrooms in all the hospital rooms. It’s better for infection control and safety and it’s nice for the patients.”

Additional improvements include updates to aging maintenance systems, exterior restoration, a new 3,000-square-foot physical therapy area and 4,300 square feet more in the upper east hospital wing that includes billing and administrative offices.

While the original bond will help carry the construction forward till about late summer and finish several updates on the building, it won’t cover all the projects, said CEO Dallas Clinger.

“One of the unfortunate things is that by not passing (the bond), it will be hard for us to not utilize the people we have here,” he said. “Our concern is by the time we get everything put together for the new phases we get with the additional money, some of our contractors may be deployed to other places, so it may cost more to bring them back.”

Clinger further explained that they will be able to finish the lower wing with the nursing home renovations, but the billing and administrative offices are among the several other projects that will have to be shelved until the hospital passes the additional bond.

Their plan now? Re-run the bond again in May 2020 and get more information out to the public regarding what it will cover.

“I think this time around it wasn’t a major election year, so we maybe didn’t put out as much information as we did in the past with the initial bond,” said Taylor. “This upcoming year we’ll just have to hit all those big spots again and get out to places like open houses. But I think if not everyone understands the need for the last little bit of money or what happened to the project, then we need to make sure we get out all the information to help people feel comfortable voting for the project.”

Taylor said if the bond passes in May and the price remains the same, the cost to taxpayers would be $.2061 per every thousand dollars of assessed property value after homeowner exemption. Yet with the potential dilemma of construction costs increasing, there is a possibility the board will have to ask for more.

“I don’t know what the board will ask for when we go to vote in May, whether it will still be 2.95 (million) or if we’ll have to bump it up for costs,” Clinger said. “But this was a bare bones budget in the first place, and I always hear the community say (they) vote no the first time around because that way (we) go back and trim out the fat. Well we don’t put fat in this. We were asking for what we need and even cutting out some things that we wanted.”

For the future, Clinger said they will probably look to create a community committee that will get word out because the price will not be getting any cheaper.

“I’d rather do it now then wait and see what it will cost later,” he said.

Anyone who’s interested in further information or would like a tour of the area can contact Clinger or Taylor at 208-226-3200.