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your Mardi Gras tickets soon
St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation’s Annual Mardi Gras event will feature plenty of fabulous live and silent auction items for guests to bid on and the proceeds will go to a truly worthy cause. The Mardi Gras event is especially important to St. Mary’s Hospital because it allows us to address critical facility needs to help us serve our patients. Last year the event helped the St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation fund a new heating system to replace an outdated and extremely inefficient one. “The new boiler system has been amazing”, said Matt Polumsky, SMH Maintenance Manager. “Not only do we have more consistent heating and warm water, it has saved us approximately 40% of our previous heating bills. The old boilers worked at about 50% efficiency. The new system has a 95% efficiency rating and has provided a savings of about $35,000 in our heating bills. Not to mention the huge decrease in man hours it takes to service, run, and repair.” Another project that the Mardi Gras Fundraiser supported was the patient shower room. “The old shower room was virtually unusable”, continued Matt. “It had a parlor tub and we had no way to lift patients in and out of it. It was a cast iron tub and impossible to keep warm and the layout of the room made it difficult to move around in. Now we have a beautiful room with a walk in tub, shower, and enough room to accommodate our patients and their caregivers.” This year the SMH Foundation is raising money to install a critical Fire Suppression System in the hospital. This system will not only provide necessary safety measures, but it will allow the hospital to make much needed improvements to the Emergency Room and other services that can’t move forward without it. Tickets are $35 per person and include a delicious dinner provided by Rodonna’s catering, dancing, casino games and exciting live and silent auction packages. “We have a lot of great auction items this year including a .22 Chipmunk rifle (funds donated by St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center), an 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun, and a “Caliber of Your Choice” Savage Axis II Accu Trigger rifle with a Vortex scope. Several other items are also available including a $350 PowerVac Certificate Donated by Straw’s PowerVac, 1 ton of pellets donated by St. Mary’s Hospital, a STIHL 180 chainsaw with 1 cord of wood, split, for summer delivery, and much, much more.” Natalie Latimer. The Mardi Gras event will begin at 5:00 p.m. at the Cottonwood Community Hall on March 25th. Please contact Kim Johnson at 208-962-2201 or Natalie Latimer 208-962-2463 if you are interested in attending, sponsoring or donating an auction item. 
New boilers at the hospital funded in part by the Mardi Gras event. 
The old boilers at the Hospital that were replaced with funding, in part, from the Mardi Gras event. 
A shower room at the hospital paid for with funds from the Mardi Gras event. Photos above provided by Kim Johnson. |
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