Whidbey General Hospital’s board of commissioners adopted their legal budget last week.

This budget, approved Monday, Nov. 10, according to Chief Operations Officer Terry Litke, is the estimated amounts for budget increases in the 2015 calendar year, and the detailed budget is yet to be completed.

The legal budget is required to be completed by the end of November in order to set the property taxes, which will increase by the maximum-allowed 1 percent, in time.

The board approved three resolutions.

The first resolved to adopt the legal budget and the 1 percent tax increase. The other two were to approve the actual dollar amount increases in the emergency medical services levy amount and the maintenance and operations levy amount, which were $45,537.93 and $8,966, respectively.

The legal budget includes estimated revenue amounts from both the normal operations and non-operating revenues.

Estimated revenues from 2015 are about $1.74 million.

Operating expenses, which are estimated at $112.3 million, project a loss of about $4.9 million for the coming year.

Hospital administrators estimate that they’ll have $8 million “cash on hand” to support the loss, which leaves $3 million in the reserve.

The current amounts are estimated amounts; actual amounts will be detailed in the final budget.

Litke said the hospital’s board hopes to have the final budget completed by the end of November, but he’s unsure if it will make that deadline, since they’re still working on getting it finalized.

“The bottom line on the final budget may or may not be a $5 million loss,” Litke said. “This is our estimate of what it’s going to be at this point in time.”