The Park Hospital District’s attorney on Tuesday defended both the legality of the district’s transfer of Estes Park Health to UCHealth on Dec. 1, 2025, and two roughly $100,000 severence payments questioned by a board member, urging officials to avoid actions that could jeopardize the agreement.

“Any suggestion that any part of this transaction is improper is, in our opinion, unfounded,” David Snow said, noting that appropriate approvals for the transfer were received in advance, including those from 80 percent of the district’s voters who authorized long-term financial commitments for operations, the Colorado Attorney General, and Larimer County.

“We should not be questioning the validity of it (the transfer) and inviting potential litigation or termination for breach by our partner. We need to, as a district, act to implement this and support it going forward,” Snow said.

Snow’s comments came after the board spent 20 minutes discussing whether to enter an executive session to address what appeared to be a list of issues noted in a memo received by board members, and after nearly 45 minutes in the closed-door meeting.

“If there is something specific that needs to be discussed, I would consider that, but I’d like to know specifically what that is and make sure that we follow open meeting laws and limit our discussion to that one subject,” said board member Tom Leigh, prior to voting against entering an executive session. Two-thirds of the board members must approve entering an executive session.

After Brigitte Foust joined Leigh in opposing the executive session, board members voted to limit the topics considered during a board-member-only session to specific legal advice on negotiating contractual commitments.

The two checks, written to Estes Park Health and signed by the district’s vice chairman Steve Alper, were noted in a Feb. 17 memo to the board provided by District Treasurer Brigitte Foust.

“Those were authorized by Resolution 2025-04…authorizing the chair, or vice chair, to sign all instruments, documents, related to closing the deal,” Snow said.

“There’s no question in my mind that those were properly authorized and a proper expenditure of the district post-closing. They clearly related to the definitive agreements and were part of the deal that had to be done to get it (the transfer to UCHealth) implemented,” Snow said.

According to the special district’s bylaws, checks are to be cosigned by the chair and the treasurer. The two checks at issue, reimbursements for severence payments made to Pat Samples, Estes Park Health’s former chief nursing officer, and Igor Huzicka, an internal medicine physician who was only employed for 90 days, were not discussed by the board before they were written by Alper.

Snow also told the board that funds for those two expenditures had been withheld from the amounts transferred to the Estes Valley Medical Center as part of the definitive agreements “for the express purpose of paying those separate agreements.”

In countering assertions that the transfer of Estes Park Health to UCHealth may have been “illegal or improper or inappropriate under Title 32 of the law, the Colorado statute that governs special districts, or any other Colorado or federal law, we want to emphatically state that is not the case,” Snow said.

“Some of the remarks have been interpreted that way by other parties, including people to whom this is important,” Snow said.

Because of the affiliation agreement, Snow reminded board members, “it’s not our hospital operation anymore. It’s not a hospital management agreement,” he said.

“It’s a transfer of the hospital operations with long-term post-closing covenants to maintain a hospital and continue to provide care to the community and use the tax money locally,” Snow said.

The attorney’s recommendation was to “stick to our role as a landlord and to oversee the terms of the definitive agreement.”

During the meeting, Snow provided the board with the closing binder, which includes information on the assets and liabilities in place on Dec. 1 when UCHealth acquired EPH.

Reviews of the board’s CORA, spending and code of ethics and conduct policies were tabled until the board’s next special meeting on Tuesday, April 2 when the board meets in the conference room of Vert, 1280 Big Thompson Ave.