Letters to the editor: Is this where taxes should go?

The last letter I wrote (in November 2019) addressed the fact that the Mercy Hospital District lost $306,000 in its stock market account for 2018, while taking $500,000 in tax money from five townships and three little cities that year. I questioned whether it was proper to use taxpayer money to play the stock market.

What the Pine Knot News didn’t allow to be published in that letter, until I backed up my claims with documents, was that the hospital district was still taking $60,000 a month out of the general fund for the hospital and putting it into the stock market throughout 2019.

While the board voted to stop the stock investments at one of its final 2019 finance committee meetings, 12 months at $60,000 a month adds up to $720,000.

Is that where our 2019 tax levy of $500,000 went?

Sue Pedersen,

Mercy Hospital Board

representative for Silver Township