We need to set the record straight: The Estes Valley Voice welcomes UCHealth stepping in to operate Estes Park’s hospital and medical center with the hope that UCHealth can keep the hospital open in Estes Park.
Small, rural community hospitals across the country face financial risk for various reasons, and the editorial team at the Estes Valley Voice believes that the acquisition of EPH by UCHealth presents our community with the best opportunity to sustain and maintain a local healthcare system.
It’s no secret, however, that Estes Valley Voice has had serious concerns about many details in the Park Hospital District’s agreement with UCHealth, particularly the mill levy arrangement: property taxpayers in the Estes Valley will surrender their Park Hospital District property tax money – right now $4.5 million annually based on property valuations – to UCHealth for the next 50 years.
The Estes Valley Voice firmly believes that one of the responsibilities of journalists is to scrutinize how public dollars are spent and demand public accountability and transparency. We have problems with this arrangement.
But make no mistake. Our concerns have always been centered on how the Park Hospital District Board conducts its business on behalf of the public.
We have many examples. But here are just a few:
- We have repeatedly questioned why the Park Hospital District Board has conducted almost weekly – and sometimes more – executive sessions over the past three years. While the sessions have been posted with broad Colorado Revised Statutes language, they have not included the required specific reason, such as “resolution language related to definitive agreement,” which we learned was one of the items discussed during a recent executive session.
- Now and then, in a regular open public Board meeting, a Board member will begin discussing an item of interest, then stop and say, “We already talked about that.” Any member of the public who has attended every meeting knows that the conversation must have occurred during an executive session or through a daisy chain email, because it wasn’t discussed at an open meeting.
- At every regular meeting, the Board approves executive session meeting minutes as part of the consent agenda. There are no such minutes. The Board ceased taking executive meeting minutes in 2020, as indicated in the minutes of all meetings posted on the EPH website and confirmed in an email received from a previous Board chair.
- The last Board orientation session conducted publicly with three or more members happened in 2017. There was no onboarding of the two Board members elected in May 2025 to review Board policies and instruct the Board members on Colorado’s Open Meeting and Open Records statutes.
- A CORA request for Park Hospital District to provide details of the number of legal hours spent defending EPH in a Colorado Open Records Act case dealing with the letter of intent signed in October 2024 is pending in the Larimer County District Court. The public has a right to know about all aspects of the budget, including how much money the PHD Board has spent on legal fees.
- Recently, the Estes Valley Voice submitted a CORA request for documentation about a severance payment made to an executive employee. The first response claimed that there was no severance agreement in place. A second request resulted in receiving the multi-page, signed severance agreement, which paid the former employee, who abruptly left in May to “retire,” 12 months of salary. Estes Park Health issued a press release announcing that this employee had “retired.” In what world is a severance agreement paid upon retirement from a public, taxpayer-funded institution? Estes Park Health is a special district, a unit of public government, not a private corporation. The salaries, bonuses, and other financial benefits paid to public employees are a matter of public record.
- There has not been an Estes Park Health financial report provided to the public since August. The Park Hospital District, d/b/a/Estes Park Health, is a public, taxpayer-supported institution, not a private corporation.
- Special districts are required to file transparency notices with the State Department of Local Affairs every year. There hasn’t been one filed since 2018.
- At the Nov. 20 meeting, Janet Zeschin said the PHD Board was having a website developed, emails for Board members would be created, and phone numbers would be obtained so taxpayers could communicate with their publicly elected Board members. Those would be significant steps toward transparency, accountability and accessibility – those steps should have been done long ago – but, as of the close of business today, there is no Park Hospital District website set up, no phone number, no address for where the Park Hospital District offices are located, and no publicly available email addresses for taxpayers to communicate with the body that collects their property tax money. Before handing over the keys to UCHealth, the PHD Board had not taken action in a public meeting – with a formal motion, which was seconded and then voted on – to approve an expenditure of public funds to acquire those assets.
The members of the Park Hospital District Board have not treated the public with the respect it deserves. For more than five decades, the Estes Valley community has paid millions in taxes to build and support the hospital. The community has also contributed generously through fundraisers and numerous philanthropic efforts, providing the hospital with funds to purchase diagnostic equipment and cover various expenses not included in the main budget.
The way the Park Hospital District Board – which will continue to exist solely for the purpose of imposing a mill levy, collecting property tax revenues, and then distributing that money to UCHealth – has treated the public makes us skeptical about how it will treat the public in the future.
Moving forward, although the Park Hospital District will have no oversight of how healthcare is provided using our tax dollars, we hope the Park Hospital Board of Directors will conduct the public’s business publicly.