FORKS — Catch a cold and cut your taxes.

Forks Community Hospital’s proposed $9.8 million bond issue has a unique feature:

If approved by voters Nov. 8, it would give tax credits for hospital bills, insurance co-pays and deductibles.

In other words, if a person’s annual tax burden for the bonds were $100 and if he or she paid a $75 hospital bill in the same year, that payment could be applied to the person’s tax liability.

In this case, he or she would pay only $25 in hospital-bond taxes.

Bills in excess of the tax share could cancel the entire tax payment.

In the above case, paying a $100 hospital bill would eliminate the person’s liability for the bonds.

The provision could have the unplanned benefit of keeping health-care business at Forks Community Hospital.

If taxpaying patients knew their bills would defray their property taxes, they might be less likely to seek aid elsewhere.

Keeping health-care dollars in Hospital District 1 wasn’t the hospital commission’s motive for including the tax credit, according to Debbie Roberts, assistant to Camille Scott, hospital executive director.

“It wasn’t designed to flow that way,” Roberts said Wednesday.

“The tax credit is an extra, added thing.

“It’s basically like you’re prepaying. That’s how I look at it.”

Funds for new clinic

The bond issue will go before voters in the general election. It would raise money to build a new clinic, consolidate West End Outreach services and upgrade technology.

Exactly how much a property owner would pay for each $1,000 of assessed valuation has yet to be worked out, said John Sherrett, the hospital’s chief financial officer.

Hospital District 1 serves about 11,000 people in a 2,000-square-mile area that stretches from the Hoh Tribal Reservation to Clallam Bay.