If Wauneta voters approve a 1 percent sales tax to stabilize the Wauneta Care and Therapy Center’s finances, it’s estimated it would bring in more than $60,000 a year.
    That would enable the village to meet its annual payment of nearly $43,000 a year to retire revenue bonds issued in 2012, when the village bought the nursing home to keep it from closing.
    So what happens to the extra money?
    It can go to the nursing home for other purposes, like to build up reserves. But Village trustees also have mentioned the possibility of using whatever money isn’t needed for the home to tackle other city infrastructure projects.
    Whether that’s done is up to the board, but the option to do that is right in the ballot language.
    The measure on which voters will decide says, in part, “the proceeds collected [will] be used to support the operations of the nursing home, capital improvements or to reduce existing debt incurred to fund capital improvements.”
    There hasn’t been much board discussion of where any extra money would go, but trustees have mentioned the swimming pool and the water system.
    Public Works Superintendent Bill Bischoff said the pool was built in 1961 and “the valving, the pump room, that’s pretty much all original. The problem is if something breaks in that pump room and we can’t patch it, it’s pretty much dead in the water.”

To read the full story, subscribe to the e-edition online or call the Breeze at 308-394-5389 to subscribe to the print edition.