Laurel: To those who helped. Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was last seen Dec. 2, looking for her missing cat near Monday’s Union Restaurant near the village of Marguerite in Unity. About 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, a search began for Pollard, centered around a sinkhole into an abandoned mine nearby.
The search went on for days, long after the cold weather made it more likely to be a recovery mission than a rescue. Pollard’s body was found early Dec. 6.
The efforts were the kind of thing that might have gotten national attention if the whole country wasn’t watching the manhunt for a murderer unfold in Manhattan. In Westmoreland County, the efforts to save one woman carried on with large numbers of people lending their hands.
State police were involved. So were fire departments, including Pleasant Unity and Marguerite. The state Bureau of Mining and Department of Environmental Protection were there. Ligonier Construction had an excavator on the scene shortly after it was requested.
And then there was Monday’s Union, which became the home base for the operation.
“They were there from the beginning to offer us food and keep us warm,” Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Steve Limani said. “And, as we got into several days of operations, they essentially turned the building over to us so we could host meetings and have a media staging area.”
The sad truth about any rescue operation is, no matter how diligent the effort, there will not always be a happy ending. The comforting reality, however, is communities come together despite knowing that.
Lance: To financial woes. Independence Health System was made up of the merging of Butler Health System and Excela Health. Whether that was a good money marriage is looking more and more questionable.
As of Dec. 3, Fitch Ratings has branded Butler Health’s bonds at junk status. That tells the financial world Butler’s bonds are not worth it for investments and the organization has a negative outlook.
The reason for the downgrade is ongoing operating pressures and a fiscal year deficit. While that can be true of a lot of small hospitals, it seems particularly grim as Butler seeks a forbearance agreement with its bank and bondholders. Doing so would delay repayment. The guarantee for that repayment was hospital revenues, assets and a lien.
Without that agreement, Butler would need to repay $45 million by June.
Fitch did say Butler’s books showed third-quarter 2024 improvement. It just wasn’t enough to stay out of junk bond territory.
