Wisconsin residents organize in fight to keep county nursing homes public

Nancy Roppe, 64, has advice for anyone speaking at a Portage County Board meeting: Write your statement down, rehearse it ahead of time and keep it under three minutes.

As she leaves home for each board meeting, her husband Joe offers his own advice to his wife: “Don’t get tased.”

Roppe, a self-described “five foot nothing, crippled little old lady,” fiercely opposes selling Portage County’s public nursing home to a private bidder. She’s spent years causing “good trouble” in voicing that opinion to elected board members. Deputies have escorted her out of meetings “more than once,” she said.

Board members say the county can no longer afford to operate the nursing home. They see Roppe differently, describing her as caustic, extremely loud and unproductive. But it’s hard to deny the impact she and other organizers have achieved. The nursing home remains in county hands — for now.  

During years of debate over the Portage County Health Care Center’s fate, organizers successfully landed two referendums on the ballot to increase its funding, both of which voters approved. And after Roppe and her colleagues in 2024 highlighted the poor reputation of one  potential buyer, the board chose not to accept its offer.

Several grassroots campaigns across Wisconsin aim to halt the privatization of county-owned nursing homes, which tend to be better staffed, have higher quality of care and draw fewer complaints than facilities owned by for-profits and nonprofits, as WPR and Wisconsin Watch previously reported.

Portage County, whose nursing home holds a perfect 5-star federal rating, was one of at least five Wisconsin counties last year that considered selling, started the sales process or sold their county-owned nursing homes citing budgetary concerns. 

Proponents of keeping nursing homes in county hands have created social media pages, yard signs, T-shirts, and petitions and led protests — all dedicated to slowing and stopping sales. 

A for-profit company decided against buying Lincoln County’s nursing home after an organizer and board member sued the county over the sale. Organizing in Sauk County has drawn federal regulators’ attention. Public nursing home supporters in St. Croix County packed a meeting where board members ultimately voted against selling.

But some of those victories may prove short-lived. Sauk County’s board approved a buyer last year, Lincoln County is looking for new buyers, and the Portage County Board voted in December to again consider a sale.

“If I can throw a monkey wrench in what they’re trying to do, I’m going to exhaust every possible avenue to do that,” Roppe said in an interview.

But after years of fighting the sale, she might be running out of options. 

Sister’s memory fuels advocacy

Roppe’s older sister Carol could make friends with complete strangers.

“That was one of her best things,” Roppe recalled. “She just knew everybody.”

Carol, a longtime nurse, was 57 years old when she began needing care following a kidney cancer diagnosis. She lived at home between treatments — until the day she fell. The cancer had deteriorated her spine, which the small slip fractured. With no way for her family to give her proper care at home, she moved into the Portage County Health Care Center. 

Roppe visited her every day until Carol died in 2015.

When the Portage County Board started discussing selling the nursing home, Roppe started to speak up at its meetings, tapping her comfort with public speaking.

“I got a big mouth and I use it,” she said.

In 2018 Roppe and other organizers campaigned for people to vote in favor of a ballot referendum to raise taxes to keep the nursing home in county hands.  

Voters approved it with 61% of the vote. 

But Portage County board members worry about more than just operating costs. The center was built in 1931 and hasn’t been significantly updated in 30 years. The building needs major renovations, board members and advocates acknowledge.

A 2022 referendum asked voters whether they would take on higher taxes to build a new facility. That passed, too, earning 59% of the vote. 

But county leaders haven’t moved forward with construction. They say the county can’t afford it, even with the voter-approved levy, due to rising construction costs. The board rejected advocates’ calls for yet another referendum. 

“Is this a business that Portage County should be in?” That’s what Portage County Board Chair Ray Reser asks. He says the county board is focused on keeping the nursing home beds in Portage County, even if the county no longer owns them. The groundswell of support for the nursing home doesn’t surprise him.

“It’s a really beloved institution in the county,” Reser said, while adding that it’s not the facility it once was. 

When Carol moved into the nursing home, Roppe knew it didn’t have the newest amenities or the nicest building. But it had the best care, which the federal government still rates “much above average.” 

Portage County’s only other nursing home is for-profit and rated “below average.”

Roppe now spends some entire days organizing to protect the nursing home, even though a decade has passed since her sister lived there.

Before major board votes, the Roppes post the meeting agenda and other details to their “Save the Portage County Health Care Center” Facebook group.” Nancy prints and delivers agendas to advocates without social media and crafts her own public statement. Joe sets up a livestream of the meetings for those wanting to watch at home, and Nancy arrives in-person at least 15 minutes early. 

Nancy follows each meeting by typing up a colorful summary to share with those who couldn’t watch. “The Grinch is alive and well in Portage County,” she wrote in December after the board voted to solicit buyers. 

“I enjoy the fight,” she said. “I wish I didn’t have to fight, but I’ll take the fight on.”

St. Croix County organizers see victory

Nearly 200 miles west of Portage County, the St. Croix Health Care Campus is no longer the subject of a privatization debate.

A discussion about selling prompted opponents to flood a St. Croix County board meeting last August. 

“There were more than 100 rather annoyed old people there,” said 70-year-old Celeste Koeberl, who attended.

The board ultimately voted to keep the highly rated nursing home public, determining its revenue would likely grow, aided by higher state reimbursements and a federal grant to open a dementia wing.

Board Chair Bob Long said his colleagues never seriously considered a sale. But Koeberl credits local organizers with a victory. 

“I think that that’s an encouraging thing, that when we show up, when we speak up, we can make a positive difference, and we should remember that,” Koeberl said.

She doesn’t know anyone at the nursing home but joined neighbors in opposing the sale after learning about the possibility last summer — seeing the center as providing quality care that the county can’t afford to lose.

“Everybody has experience with an older person in their family who needs help, and everybody who faces that learns the dearth of resources,” Koeberl said.

In Portage County, nursing home advocates face challenges in maintaining the energy that propelled them early in their fight. They regularly filled county board meetings years ago, Nancy Roppe said, but now just six to eight attend each meeting, with additional folks at particularly important ones. Some core group members have died in recent years.

“People are going to get older and sicker and are just not going to be able to physically do it anymore,” Roppe said. 

At a December board meeting, nine people testified against selling, with two speaking in favor. Still, the board voted 17-8 to move a step closer by approving a potential sale.

Roppe likes to remind her colleagues that they have a winning record so far, despite the challenges.

“You cannot now get all depressed,” she said. “The fight continues.”

Advocates take case to state officials

Portage County’s nursing home debate has swirled for the majority of Grace Skibicki’s 14 years living there. She can’t recall any board members seeking her opinion.

“What’s their beef with us?” Skibicki asked. “Is it because we’re old and we don’t count?”

She moved into the nursing home following a stroke in 2011. Without an easy way to join meetings from the nursing home, she relies on friends for updates.

Skibicki worries public pressure won’t be enough to persuade the board to tap the brakes on a sale. Board members won’t be up for reelection until 2026.

But selling the facility would also require state approval.

That’s why the Roppes and more than a dozen public nursing home advocates from Sauk, Portage, Lincoln, Marathon and Walworth counties met with state officials in January in Madison — a two-hour trip from Stevens Point in Portage County. 

It was the organizers’ first meeting after years of advocating in individual counties.

“We were working more in our own little backyard, where now we’re branching out to say, ‘Hey, we need help from the state,’” Nancy Roppe said.

The organizers rehearsed questions in a hotel conference room before meeting with officials at the Department of Health Services and the Office of the Secretary of State.

The state can block individual sales based on a buyer’s financial instability or poor past performance. But the state can’t force a county to keep its facilities.

No matter what happens in Portage County, Roppe considers all of her effort worth it. Delaying the sale this long matters for residents who have relied on the nursing home in recent years.

Last year she received a reminder of that impact in the mail: a card from a former neighbor whose late husband Paul spent his final years at the Portage County Health Care Center. If not for the facility, she could not imagine where he would have ended up, the neighbor wrote.

“If we did nothing else, there was a place where Paul got the best possible care in his last days,” Roppe said.  

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.