OMC reschedules vote on refinancing resolution

Published 4:30 pm Tuesday, July 28, 2026

PORT ANGELES — An Olympic Medical Center board vote on a resolution that would give the hospital more time to refinance $40 million in bonds that was originally scheduled to take place on Monday was pushed to Wednesday after commissioners determined holding the vote on Monday would likely violate the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.

The resolution would let OMC’s Interim Chief Executive, Mark Gregson, and controller and treasurer Amanda Christenson ask the bondholders for more time to pay off the debt, and permission to hold less cash in reserve than the bonds currently require.

The bonds set a minimum of 60 days cash on hand.

The hospital’s days of cash in reserves has steadily declined from 95 in the second quarter of 2022 to 28 in April.

The district owes on two $20 million bonds, one from 2013 and one from 2016, both due Dec. 1.

The resolution would allow OMC to ask its lenders to push that deadline to as late as June 1, 2027, with a possible further year beyond that, in exchange for a higher interest rate. The 2013 bond is held by Truist Bank and the 2016 bond by Key Government Finance, an affiliate of KeyBank.

Gregson and Christenson cast the measure as a safeguard: if OMC cannot complete a planned refinancing by Dec. 1, the extension would keep the lenders from calling the bonds and demanding immediate repayment.

The board was up against a hard deadline of July 31 — the last day it could act to preserve the option — but had no regularly scheduled meeting until Aug. 5.

Under the bonds’ terms, a request to push back the tender date had to be made at least 120 days before the Dec. 1 due date.

When presented with the resolution at their regular July 15 meeting, several commissioners objected that they had only received the document that afternoon — a few hours before the 6 p.m. session — with no chance to examine it.

“I feel a little disturbed that we’re being placed into a position of approving something without some sense of review or opportunity to consider all of the issues at hand,” Commissioner Thom Hightower said.

The resolution was also not included in the board’s packet it receives before every meeting.

“We got blindsided on this, let’s face it,” Commissioner Carleen Bensen said.

Gregson told the board OMC had only learned of the option after a meeting earlier in the week with its bond counsel, KeyBank and Cain Bros., the investment firm managing the transaction. He added that the hospital’s counsel had only finalized the document that day.

“We didn’t want to miss the opportunity to take advantage of it, but we just learned of this possibility ourselves,” Gregson said.

With time running short, the board set a special meeting for Monday to take up the vote.

A special meeting was set for Monday, July 27, at 4 p.m., however, notice of it wasn’t posted on OMC’s website until Monday morning and nor at the hospital’s entrance, falling short of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act. According to the act, notice of a special meeting must be published on an agency’s website and prominently displayed at the main entrance of its principal building at least 24 hours beforehand.

Any action taken at a meeting held in violation of the notice rules is null and void, and a governing body member who attends such a meeting knowing it violates the law can be subject to a $500 fine.

Facing the short timeline, the board opted to review the resolution and take it up at a special public meeting before the deadline. Under Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act, notice of a special meeting must be prominently displayed at the main entrance of the agency’s principal building — and at the meeting site, if different — and posted on the agency’s website.

Notice of Monday’s meeting was not published on OMC’s website until Monday morning, less than 24 hours before the scheduled start, and was not posted at the hospital’s entrance.

At the July 15 meeting, the board did approve engaging Cain Brothers to complete the refinancing, at a fee of about 1.25 percent of the roughly $30 million principal — more than $250,000.

Board President Phil Giuntoli said on Tuesday that failing to post the meeting was not intentional, but an oversight. After discussing it with OMC’s counsel and other commissioners, he said the board decided the best course was to schedule another special meeting for today.

Giuntoli reiterated that the refinancing resolution was a precaution, not a commitment, giving the board the ability to weigh its options before it acted.

“We hope we don’t have to use the extension,” he said. “We really only need to refinance $20 million, but we could do all $40 million. We haven’t decided yet.”

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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com