The final vote by the Lee County Board of Commissioners on Lee Health’s conversion from a public nonprofit to a private nonprofit will take place in a special meeting at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 28, after being rescheduled due to the approach of Hurricane Milton earlier this month.
The vote expected by most observers to pass after a series of sometimes contentious meetings, will bring to a close a year-long process that started with a legislative Enabling Act in 2023 that made exploring the conversion possible.
According to the schedule set up in the legislative act, the vote was supposed to have taken place by mid-October, but Oct. 9, the day Hurricane Milton made landfall, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management issued an emergency order under the authority of Gov. Ron DeSantis that “extends the voting deadline and authorizes the Lee County Board of Commissioners and Lee Health to complete the conversion process in the coming weeks.”
In addition to casting a final vote on the conversion process, the BOCC will vote on adopting a resolution allowing the Lee County Industrial Development Authority to be substituted for Lee Memorial Health System
as issuer of the outstanding debt, according to an agenda item for the Oct. 28 meeting. The item was originally included on the agenda for the regular meeting of the BOCC on Oct. 15 but had to be moved since the conversion vote, originally scheduled for Oct. 8, did not take place due to the approach of Hurricane Milton.
“This converted the LMHS bond to an IDA bond,” the agenda item states. “The resolution also allowed Lee Health System Inc. (the new post-conversion name) to assume the outstanding balance on the debt as the successor borrower. The IDA is requesting the county to approve the reissuance of the assigned indebtedness as qualified 501(c)(3) bonds with a not-to-exceed amount of $850 million.
“The conversion of the bonds shall not obligate the IDA, Lee County, the state of Florida or any other political body or agency to levy taxes or pledge any form of taxes to pay for the principal, purchase premiums or interest under any of the related documents. It will not obligate any funds other than revenues, receipts or proceeds as pledged in the conversion documents.”
The Lee Health board of directors voted 9-1 Oct. 7 to take the final steps in the conversion process, including officially changing the name to Lee Health System Inc., setting up the final vote by the BOCC to accept the proposed conversion mission agreement.
