Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lyndoch Living, having recorded a fifth deficit in six years, is digging into residential bonds to fund its $100m masterplan.

And a warning – figures ahead, lots of figures – as we dive again into the swirling financials of Lyndoch Living.

One, two, three…jump!

When you bob up you will see that figures lodged by Lyndoch Living last week show an even greater loss – a $2.4 million deficit – than was reported at last October’s AGM (the one we were not invited to Zoom, but could watch later on YouTube).

The annual information statement lodged last week with the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission reveals a $600,000 increase on the $1.88 million loss reported at the AGM and in Lyndoch’s full financial statements to the commission.

The $2.4 m is the loss recorded by Lyndoch without taking into account the profit from the Warrnambool Medical Clinic, which it bought in 2019. Either way, it is the fifth deficit for Lyndoch in six years.

This doesn’t seem to trouble the board.

As reported here last November, Lyndoch’s overall asset base (assets minus its liabilities) also continues to slide and is now $47.6m down from $69m in 2015.

This doesn’t seem to trouble the board either.

There is a lot to digest in the 60-page financial statement, so I am going to break it into bite-sized chunks tonight and in follow-up pieces.

First, the report shows us that Lyndoch has funded at least part of its $13 million Swinton Wing expansion by doing something it has never done before, which is borrow money.

It has visited the bank and also borrowed a big chunk out of the $26 million it holds in residential bonds paid by residents.

From this $26 million in bonds, Lyndoch has thus far extracted $10,944,323.

By law, as long as an aged care provider can cover its residential bond refunds for the next 12 months, it can dig into the rest and repay it down the track.

If an aged care home defaults, the Federal Govt will pick up the tab, so it’s kind of a taxpayer-backed Ponzi scheme that relies on an aged care home doing the right thing.

It’s also cheap, interest-free money, but concerns about how these bonds are being used is one reason (among many) that the whole bond scheme is now under review as part of the Royal Commission into Aged Care.

The loans, of course, will need to be repaid at some point, including fairly substantial interest on the bank loans, despite low interest rates.

In 2018, Lyndoch paid zero interest on any loans.

In 2019, it paid $62,420.

In 2020, it paid $372,669.

As of 7 July 2020, Lyndoch signed up for another loan from the NAB for $3,386,000 which is due to be repaid by June 2022.

This was needed to fund the “redevelopment of a residential building” which, I assume, was the blowout in cost of the Swinton Wing.

That project, where residents are not allowed to hang any pictures on the walls despite paying huge bonds which helped fund it, grew from a budget of $10 million to $13 million.

Relying big on borrowed money is new territory for Lyndoch, which once upon a time used to spend only what it had, what the government gave it, and what it raised from the public.

But Lyndoch, as we know, is now a long way from those comfortable shores as it sails into a $100 million masterplan under the captaincy of a CEO and board that firmly believes you must spend money to make it.

This is why in 2019 Lyndoch bought the Warrnambool Medical Clinic, Health Spot and May Noonan Hostel, in Terang, for around $3.3 million.

(Lyndoch also recently hired JB Were – who will charge fees accordingly – to look after its complicated investment portfolio. We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.)

The Warrnambool Medical Clinic last year turned over $3.8m in revenue, but had $2.8m in expenses.

According to the financials, the clinic returned a final profit of $539,249 to Lyndoch Living in 2020 which is not to be sneezed at… but $372,000 of this will be spent this year paying out the original owners of the clinic as the final instalment of the sale contract. Achoo!

The WMC was pretty much break even for last year.

As for this year, well this is when things get interesting, because Lyndoch has the wire fencing up and around its now-vacant Tomlinson Wing (built in 1991 with help from a generous donation from the Tomlinson family), all set for demolition to make way for a new, two-storey Lyndoch medical clinic to replace the existing WMC.

This clinic will have acute care, dentistry, an x-ray machine, up to 20 GPs, allied health, education rooms, a cafe, a chemist and no doubt wonderful indoor plants and a red-and-white colour scheme.

The cost? An estimated $24 million. Where is that money coming from?

The bigger question, however, is will Lyndoch Living thrive or dive under this grand expansion and multi-million dollar spend up? Time will tell.

More soon.

 

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

As the year comes to a close, I wish I could do more for those who contact me about Lyndoch Living.

Whenever I write about Lyndoch aged care, I get a stream of messages from readers, most of whom thank me for just listening, even if I can’t help.

People care about Lyndoch and its residents, including the staff who have to go to extraordinary lengths just to get a message to me, for fear of being “caught” talking to The Terrier, but also the families of residents, and friends of residents.

I find so many of these messages heartbreaking and I feel powerless, because I can’t fix it.

All I can do is tell you – the wider community – what I have learnt and what I have investigated and hope that you, like me, won’t look away.

Like this message from a reader about the new $13 million Swinton Wing extension:

“..residents from (Tomlinson) have now been moved to the second floor of the new “dementia building” (my words). This means that all ambulant dementia residents are now “trapped” upstairs with no free access to an outside area where they can feel the breeze or sun on their face, walk on a “return” path through an enclosed garden area, and see birds hopping around.

“They now have no chickens to care for and secured outside areas for unsupervised activities are now nonexistent. ….. the new building is very impressive and state of the art, but soulless and clinical.

“Whoever thought that this was an improvement to the quality of residents’ lives has no understanding of the ageing and their needs. My alarm bells are going off and I feel this needs further investigation. Please.”

Please.

This is the new Lyndoch, I have learned, where pictures are not allowed on the new walls of the new rooms and the new TV that comes with the new room is the one a resident MUST use, even if they don’t know how to work the freakin’ new remote control.

And then there are the messages about “the rash”.

I have had so many messages about a “rash” that has been coming and going through the Audrey Prider Centre at Lyndoch for six months and I can – at last – write about it because the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) has taken up the issue on behalf of their members – the nursing staff on the front line.

In a letter to Lyndoch last week, the ANMF has asked the question up front: is this rash scabies? And if it is, what is being done about it, and what has been done to support residents and staff?

The union has asked for a response by tomorrow (Dec 4).

If this rash is not scabies – I have since heard that it ISN’T – then what is it?

It is enough to have staff and family of some residents demanding more answers.

Another worry that has filtered through to The Terrier these past weeks is the mobile “black spots” within Lyndoch that means families calling after-hours to check on sick loved ones are finding the phones are either not answered (because nursing staff are in a black spot) or the call drops out.

All of those millions spent on expanding Lyndoch – and adding an IT specialist to the executive team – and the phone system is unreliable.

Perhaps instead of worrying about awards and nominations and getting its name up in fairy lights, Lyndoch needs to make sure it responds to these concerns – and I am only able to share a few of them here.

Speaking of lights, the big, new, illuminated, illegal corporate logo on Swinton Wing will be approved retrospectively by the WCC, but will not be lit up.

The lighting breaks the planning laws, but it took neighbours to tell them that.

Given the WCC head of planning is on the Lyndoch board, we can only assume that he had no idea this sign was going ahead.

I really hope Lyndoch receives a refund on the LED.

And I really hope that those who have concerns and fears and worries about Lyndoch will keep speaking up and find the strength to stand up, to light up, knowing that we – the community – has their back.

On we go.

[This is my last post for 2020. Thankyou so much to all of the terriers who have helped The Terrier to keep going in more ways than one. You are the voices behind this voice and I couldn’t do any of it without you.]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

What’s happening at Lyndoch Living?

It’s been a long time since I have written about Lyndoch Living – our other high-profile public institution which, in recent years, has become an increasingly closed shop – but with its AGM next week, the time is right to dive back in.

I do so under the tight collar of yet another legal action against The Terrier by Lyndoch Living – my third in 12 months.

This one has been running for some weeks now and I can’t tell you much more than that…for legal reasons.

I often wonder how much money has been spent by Lyndoch on hiring the classy Collins St law firm, K & L Gates, to go after The Terrier?

Perhaps this could be one of the questions at the AGM next Tuesday at 4pm?

Another, more pressing question I planned to ask concerned the $2 million budget blowout for the Swinton Wing upgrade and expansion which had its online, virtual opening in September.

The upgrade was reportedly budgeted at $11 million, but came in at $13 million.

Where did the extra $2 million go?

Another important question I was keen to raise related to the recent fire sale of the Waterfront Living swish apartments which, as long-term readers would know, failed to fully sell since being built in 2014.

This is largely because – according to real estate watchers – those on the south side of the “Rolfanna” apartment complex were in the shade and over-priced.

In 2014, the cheapest apartment in this block was $420,000. 

The last one is now under contract, having been listed at $305,000 – a $115,000 nose dive. Ouch.

A bunch of smaller, less salubrious residential units next to “Rolfanna” are for sale for as little as $185,000.

Did Lyndoch need to liquidate some fast cash to move on to the next part of its $100 million masterplan?

Good question!

Except I won’t be asking questions at the AGM, and neither can you.

That’s because the AGM will be online via Zoom and – unlike the virtual grand opening of Swinton Wing – is strictly invitation only and we haven’t been invited.

I have contacted several families of residents to see if they have been invited and no, they didn’t even know the date of the AGM, which once-upon-a-time was advertised widely and weeks in advance.

[I learned the date just last week, after a couple of emails to the Lyndoch media unit.]

Us mere mortals who have not been invited will have to wait for the video recording to be uploaded to the Lyndoch website, which sounds sort of reasonable….except we are still waiting for the video from the 2019 AGM to be uploaded to the Lyndoch website.

More importantly, we don’t get to ask any questions next Tuesday and – I suspect – that is the whole point.

Those who have been following this Lyndoch story from the beginning (last October), know that Lyndoch – despite being community owned and built on the generosity and support of locals – has changed to a Company Limited by Guarantee and is now a very tight shop.

At last count, it had just 16 members: nine board members, the Lyndoch executive and two life members, so every member is from within Lyndoch itself.

As long-term readers know, everyone from the wider community who has applied to be a member these past 12 months, has been rejected for what we might now call the “Peter Schneider clause“, no reason.

Even Vicki Jellie AM and retired lawyer Lynn Hudson didn’t make the cut.

In this climate of litigation, frustration and obfuscation, I feel we have only one choice and that is to appoint our own Member Of Lyndoch (External) to represent us.

So meet Abbey the Airedale Terrier, also known as a Waterside Terrier (which seems fitting), a breed known for being intelligent, outgoing, alert, confident, friendly and….courageous.

Abbey is just what we need in the kennel and she will be sniffing out some important issues in the lead-up to the Lyndoch AGM that still require answers.

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