Editor’s Note: 9:30 a.m. July 11: This story has been updated to include information about proposed funds for a cancer treatment center.
University Medical Center of El Paso will ask county commissioners to approve putting a $396.6 million bond on the November ballot, the hospital’s board of managers voted unanimously Tuesday.
The El Paso County Commissioners Court, which oversees the public county hospital, would have to vote whether to place the proposed bond on the Nov. 5 ballot. UMC spokesman Ryan Mielke told El Paso Matters that the bond would go to commissioners for a vote on Aug. 12.
The UMC bond proposal comes as commissioners are considering $295 million in bond projects for the county itself, hearing recommendations from the county Bond Advisory Committee on Tuesday.
Neither UMC CEO Jacob Cintron nor Chief Financial Officer Michael Nuñez were available for comment after the managers meeting Tuesday.
During Tuesday’s UMC Board of Managers meeting, Nuñez said the impact to the average taxpayer would be about $7.95 a month – or about $94 a year at its high point, with a “weighted average” of about $5.54 a month over 30 years of the bond.
In a presentation on addressing community needs, UMC officials listed several projects the bond would fund at the hospital, including new surgical suites, new cardiac catheterization, adding 25 beds to the observation unit and expanding parking. Other projects listed included additional critical care beds, swing beds for inpatient burn care and two new operating rooms.
The bond would also help expand access to health care outside of the UMC main hospital, including a centrally located geriatric clinic, a health center in Horizon City, an ambulatory surgical center and emergency and urgent care clinic on the Westside, a rehabilitation services addition to the Eastside hospital, and a specialty clinic at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus next to UMC.
About $30 million of it would go toward the planned $97 million cancer center in conjunction with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso , which the state approved $65 million for last year. The plan was to go back to the Legislature for the remainder of the funding needed, but UMC officials had not responded to questions about that plan . TTUHSC El Paso President Richard Lange last year said El Paso property taxpayers would not have to pay for the facility.
In his quarterly presentation to the Commissioners Court on June 24, Cintron said UMC has been concerned with capacity constraints the past few years.
“We’ve had challenges that we’ve had to address and while we’ve taken some steps – for example, the purchase of the surgical hospital and things like that – it doesn’t come anywhere near to addressing the needs we have today and in the future,” he said.
In 2022, UMC proposed issuing $346 million in certificates of obligation – debt that doesn’t require voter approval but is repaid by taxpayer dollars – for a slew of improvements to UMC and the El Paso Children’s Hospital. That effort was stalled after more than 35,000 residents signed a petition asking that the proposal be left up to voters.
