Island Nursing Home leaders press towns for funding as facility struggles to reopen

At Selectmen meetings this year, representatives of the Island Nursing Home (INH) urged Stonington officials to help preserve local skilled nursing capacity.

Skip Greenlaw and Leon Weed, speaking on behalf of INH, told the Selectmen the facility was running a structural deficit and that Medicare reimbursement and patient revenues would not cover operating costs. Greenlaw said the facility faced both staffing and housing problems and asked the towns to weigh financial help; board members and residents pressed for clearer financial statements and a long-term plan rather than an open-ended subsidy.

The Selectmen and INH representatives discussed several options presented at different meetings: recruiting new board members, seeking petitions to place funding on town meeting warrants, and exploring housing solutions for staff. Linda Nelson and other local planners said housing availability was a central barrier to retaining caregivers and that any financial support would likely need to be tied to a plan for staffing and sustainability.

Selectmen repeatedly asked for more detailed budgets and for clarity about whether reported deficits reflected pre‑pandemic figures or more recent inflation-adjusted shortfalls. The transcript records requests for a town meeting article and notes that a formal petition would be required to place a funding question before voters; no town appropriation or binding vote to commit funds to INH appears in the minutes included in this record.

“We needed to put up or shut up because we petitioned them to open the facility,” a representative said while urging towns to act; meeting minutes record frustration from both the facility’s backers and some Selectmen at the lack of transparent financial documentation.

The Selectmen encouraged INH representatives to return with audited or reconciled financial statements, clear staffing projections, and a concrete request (amount and use) if they intended to seek a town meeting appropriation. Several Selectmen and attendees said they would consider housing- and workforce-related approaches as complementary to any direct subsidy; the minutes show ongoing discussion across multiple meetings but no final decision recorded.