Schuylkill County commissioners on Wednesday agreed to allocate Rest Haven another $1.3 million in part to help the facility pay off its debt to the county.

In July, commissioners loaned the nursing home $750,000 and gave it $99,825 from the general fund. A prior loan was rolled into the one granted in July after Rest Haven was unable to pay it.Although Rest Haven made four of the five payments on the latest loan, it cannot keep up because its revenue continues to lag behind expenses, said county finance director Paul Buber.The agreement to give Rest Haven more money came shortly before adopting a 2015 county budget that called for siphoning money from the fund balance to close a $4.16 million gap between revenue and expenditures, and imposing austerity measures to keep costs down.The county in August announced it would sell the nursing home, in Schuylkill Haven, because it is a financial drain. The county expects to sell the home early next year.The problem, said county Administrator Mark Scarbinsky, is that Rest Haven's income falls chronically short of its expenses."We're doing the best we can to stay on top of it," he said.But the money isn't coming in as fast as it's being paid out, Scarbinsky said.One major issue is that most of the residents rely on Medicaid to pay for their stay.But the actual cost of care exceeds the Medicaid reimbursement.Selling the facility will staunch the flow of red ink."We have a few more months to deal with this situation," he said. "We anticipated a sale will alleviate this problem going forward."The county has narrowed the list of potential buyers down to 10.But Wednesday's request for an additional $1.3 million caught commissioners by surprise. They had figured the last infusion would hold Rest Haven for awhile.Commissioners George F. Halcovage Jr. and Gary J. Hess both called for Service Access Management, the group that manages Rest Haven, to provide more accurate and timely snapshots of the home's finances."We need to have on a daily basis. That's what we're paying SAM to do, to have oversight on this. we need to keep the place going, but this is unacceptable," Halcovage said."We'd really like to know what's ahead. With the sale going through, we need to know what our liabilities are," Hess said."The bottom line is that we need to continue to pay attention to this until we sell it," said Commissioners' Chairman Frank J. Staudenmeier.