Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Hospital Owes $147,000 In Utilities

Even though it has been closed several years, the Nevada County Hospital owes more than $147,000 to the city of Prescott for water, sewer and electrical services.

Information released by the city after a Freedom of Information request, reflects that two commercial accounts (no names were released by the city) are more than 90 days past due and owe $50,000 while the other account owes just more than $97,000.

Nevada County Judge James Roy Brown confirmed these were the two amounts owed by the county on the hospital building.

Nevada County Hospital closed before Brown took office four years ago as judge.

Brown said on March 31 that the utilities were not being paid to the city when he first went into office.

"We (the county) just don't have the funds to pay the utilities," Brown said last Friday.

He stated that he was planning to request the utilities be turned off since winter has ended.

"Heat is required to keep the chilling unit working during the winter," according to Brown "Without the utilities, we would have lost not only the chilling unit but most of the facility's plumbing as well."

Brown said it has been his hope that someone would move into the hospital and make the building useful to the county once again.

Brown said he was told when taking office that city officials had told county officials not to worry about utilities - and that nobody from the city had ever approached him in any way about keeping the utility bill current or paying on the past due bill.

"I am under the impression," Brown said, "that we would not have to pay the utility bills at all."

In addition, Brown added, that his office did not receive a bill from the city for more than a year after he took office.

Nevada County Hospital became insolvent in 1995 and went into receivership July 31, 1996. Receivership is a type of bankruptcy.

At the time of the closing, the facility owed more than $78,000 in past utility bills.

Of this, nothing was written off by the city and Prescott has collected $9,345 toward the hospital's account.

Brown said he felt that the old hospital building will be of use to someone in the future.

"It has run down quite a bit since closing, which is natural in buildings that are not occupied," Brown said Friday, "We just hope once utilities are turned off that it will not become useless to the community."

Prescott Mayor Howard Taylor said in an interview, also on Friday, that the city was in the process of seeing about turning off utilities on the facility.