DAYTON — For the first time, city leaders are learning what’s next for building a public hospital in Dayton.
In November 2025, voters approved a levy to build a hospital, and now city leaders are looking at their options to make that happen.
News Center 7’s Xavier Hershovitz was in Montgomery County for the Dayton City Commission meeting on Wednesday morning.
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The city’s law director, Barb Doseck, laid out the option for city commissioners and said, “The provisions of the Ohio Revised Code that we’ve been asked to utilize have not been done so before.” She continued by saying, “That means there’s no precedent, no roadmap, no case law, and no really clear direction.”
City lawyers found two options that commissioners could take. One is to find a non-profit to partner with and contract out the services to them.
John Musto, Assistant City Attorney for Dayton, said, “It’d be a charitable nonprofit that the city would have to find and contract with to give them the revenue from the levy to go about its task of building and running the hospital.”
If the city takes that option, it will have to put it on the ballot for voters to approve.
“Now, the challenge is that it’s unknown what public preferences would be for this. We don’t know if we’d even find a nonprofit that would be willing to take this on,” Musto said.
The other option is the mayor-run board as laid out by the ordinance.
“The duties of that board would be extensive. They would have to hire the employees. They would have to adopt the plan for the hospital,” Musto said.
The city’s lawyers said the around $19 million the levy would raise over 10 years is not enough.
“Just the construction of the hospital loan will greatly exhaust and greatly exceed the amount of money we received from the budget, which doesn’t take into consideration the cost of the medical diagnostic equipment that a modern hospital would need,” Musto said.
The city commission will look at holding public meetings to hear what option voters would like the city to take.
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