When the Sonoma Valley Health Care Coalition had a $20,000 survey done of voters’ attitudes toward building a new Sonoma Valley Hospital, the hospital picked up the tab.
The coalition, an ad hoc group that formed to try to keep a hospital in the Valley after voters turned down the $148 million Measure C ballot proposal to build a new earthquake-safe facility, is running ads for several weeks in both of Sonoma’s newspapers — and the hospital is buying.
The hospital also will pay when financial consultants evaluate such things as various proposals to build new hospitals in a several locations.
When all is said and done, the hospital is expected to fund roughly $200,000 of the coalition’s activities, said Jim McSweeney, the hospital chief financial officer.
Does that threaten the coalition’s independence?
Not according to Steve Pease, one of the coalition’s founders.
“Somebody could spin it that way,” Pease said. “(But) they are paying for the kinds of expenses that they would to pay anyway under the circumstances.”
For example, Pease said, “We convinced the hospital that they will have to do this kind of (voter) survey, anyway.”
McSweeney agreed, “Technically speaking, they’re our expenses. But they’re being jointly coordinated with the coalition.”
The hospital’s board approved spending the money on the coalition.
Pease said that the coalition independently made the choice to hire the Pleasanton-based Charlton Research Company, whose past clients include the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle presidential campaigns.
“We’re the ones that picked Charlton. We’re the ones that made the decision,” Pease said.
Pease also noted that roughly half of the coalition’s steering committee members are from the “No on C” camp, including critics of the current administration such as Marilyn Goode and Lu Benson and Kathy Barnett, a hospital board candidate who has stated publicly that, if she’s elected, she’d probably vote to fire hospital CEO Bob Kowal.
“We are all aware of the fact that we have to maintain our independence,” Pease said.
One example of that, he said, was the selection of Jennings Ackerly Architecture to study again the idea of reusing or adding onto the existing facility, despite resistance from Bob Kowal, the hospital’s chief executive officer.
But it was important to give that option a fair shake, Pease said.
The biggest-ticket item that the hospital has agreed to fund is $90,000 to hire HFS, an Oakland-based health care consulting firm, to help the coalition evaluate the various proposals for building a new hospital, including the in-town option, a hospital on Broadway and Napa Road and a privately funded hospital on Eighth Street East and Napa Road.
Other future expenses that the hospital will likely cover include a mail survey of Valley residents, including non-voters; employees’ and doctors’ surveys; and the hiring a public outreach consultant, which McSweeney said is expected to cost about $30,000.
Pease said another reason the coalition is seeking hospital funding now is because once an election gets underway, the hospital can’t make campaign donations.
Overall, including work done before the Measure C campaign started, the hospital has spent $1.5 million planning for a new facility.
“We spent $1.5 million on absolutely everything. The majority of that goes to architects and planners,” said McSweeney.
