In 2020, Sullivan County officials warned that the Adult Care Center at Sunset Lake was losing millions of dollars annually and that keeping it under county operation would require tax increases, layoffs or cuts to other services. The county began pursuing private operation as a way to keep the facility open while ending those taxpayer subsidies.
That effort immediately became political. In 2020, Legislator Luis Alvarez cast the lone vote against transferring the facility to the Sunset Lake Local Development Corporation, which had been created as part of the county’s privatization strategy. A few years later, Catherine Scott emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for keeping Sunset Lake in public hands.
On Nov. 2, 2023, just five days before the county election that landed Scott in the legislature, she appeared before the state committee considering Infinite Care’s Certificate of Need application. The Certificate of Need, or CON, is required for any entity in New York looking to operate a care facility like the one at Sunset Lake. Scott was joined by Alvarez and former county public health official Lise Kennedy, and the transcript suggests at least some coordination among the speakers.
Scott did not simply ask regulators to scrutinize Infinite Care more closely. She explicitly asked the committee not to act before voters had their say.
“Please do not make a decision about this,” Scott told the committee, pointing to the election scheduled for the following Tuesday and to candidates running on keeping Sunset Lake public.
That hearing now looks much more important in hindsight, because the political effort to stop or delay the transition did not end there.
Before Sullivan County decided to close the Adult Care Center at Sunset Lake, there was a years-long political fight over whether the facility should remain in public hands or transition to private operation.
One of the most revealing moments came during a Nov. 2, 2023 state hearing on Infinite Care’s application to take over as the licensed operator. Catherine Scott, then a candidate for the Sullivan County Legislature, appeared alongside Legislator Luis Alvarez and former county public health official Lise Kennedy to raise concerns about the proposed transfer.
Scott argued that Infinite Care was already deeply involved in the facility despite technically serving as a consultant.
“This may be a consulting contract, but these people are there handling the day to day,” Scott said.
Kennedy went even further, telling the committee, “The county is very much hands off. Infinite Care does everything.”
State Department of Health official Mark Furnish responded by drawing an important distinction between day-to-day management and legal responsibility. Because Sullivan County still held the operating certificate, Furnish said the county remained responsible in the eyes of the state for “the clinical, the financial, everything.”
Kennedy also raised serious allegations about Infinite Care’s finances and performance, including that it had not made a promised $3 million investment and had failed to provide required financial reconciliations. Those concerns deserved scrutiny, but the hearing was also part of a broader political effort to keep Sunset Lake under county control.
After Scott won her election, that goal increasingly became policy. By March 2024, she was already asking whether the Sunset Lake LDC should be dissolved. The LDC was eventually disbanded in 2025, and the Care Center returned to direct county ownership.
The question now is whether winning the political fight to keep Sunset Lake public ultimately left Sullivan County responsible for a facility a previous legislature had already warned it could not afford to operate indefinitely.
Sullivan County is closing the Adult Care Center at Sunset Lake after years of political opposition to the county’s effort to move the facility toward private operation.
That history matters because county officials warned as early as 2020 that continued public operation was financially unsustainable. The county created the Sunset Lake LDC and eventually selected Infinite Care Management as part of an effort to transfer operations while preserving the nursing home.
Opponents fought that strategy. Luis Alvarez cast the lone vote against the original transfer to the LDC, while Catherine Scott later campaigned on keeping Sunset Lake in public hands. In 2023, Scott appeared before the state committee considering Infinite Care’s Certificate of Need application and explicitly asked officials not to make a decision before the election. After winning office, she pushed toward dissolving the LDC, which was ultimately disbanded in 2025 and the facility returned to direct county ownership.
Scott was still optimistic about that outcome in July 2025, when she said she wanted to work with newly appointed administrator Kayshawn Macharie to make Sunset Lake “the premier facility of its kind in the County.”
Within months, however, county officials had begun considering closure. Without a pathway to operating the facility, Infinite Care eventually ended its consulting relationship and stopped pursuing the operating certificate transfer, leaving Sullivan County faced with the full cost of staffing, equipping and operating the facility itself.
The county now says it cannot afford to do so, and 94 residents are affected by the closure.
No one can know with certainty whether Infinite Care would have succeeded had the political opposition taken a different course. What can be said is that the effort to keep Sunset Lake under public control succeeded, while the county’s effort to transition the facility to private operation did not.
The result raises a question that those who fought privatization should have to answer:
Was keeping Sunset Lake in public hands more important than keeping it open?
