Ballot proposals may be on collision course

Cirrus Health, a Dallas, Tex.-based hospital company, plans to ask Sonoma voters in June to extend the city’s urban growth boundary, or UGB, to allow it to build a new privately funded hospital at Eighth Street East and Napa Road.
Meanwhile, the Sonoma Valley Health Care District has raised the idea of putting a multi-million dollar general-obligation bond on the ballot to build a publicly funded, earthquake-safe facility to replace the current Andrieux Street hospital.
Will the ballot measures butt heads?
If Cirrus seeks voters’ approval for a UGB amendment, which requires a simple majority to pass, could that spoil the chances of the bond’s success, which calls for two-thirds’ voters’ support?
Architect Michael Ross, of the Boyes Hot Springs-based firm Ross, Drulis, Cusenbery, said that Cirrus’s effort to expand the UGB doesn’t preclude a public hospital.
Cirrus is willing to share the site with a public facility, he said.
“The Eighth Street East site has been offered to the Sonoma Valley Health Care District for use as a public hospital, co-located with… Cirrus,” said Ross, who was due Wednesday to make a presentation to Sonoma City Council about Cirrus’s UGB plans.
Cirrus could build a medical office building, an ambulatory surgery center and a medical spa – and still leave space on the site for a public hospital, he said.
Sonoma Valley Hospital spokesman Scott Gregerson said that if the hospital district seeks a general-obligation bond to build a new facility, it wouldn’t have to do so in June – at the same time as Cirrus’s proposal.
“We don’t have to be on the June ballot. We have flexibility,” Gregerson said.
That sentiment was echoed by Steve Pease, a leader of the Sonoma Valley Health Care Coalition, the all-volunteer organization that’s been working to find a way to keep some sort of hospital going in the Sonoma Valley.
“There’s always been a potential for a train wreck of one sort or another,” Pease said.
The coalition probably will make its recommendation in March as to how best to proceed, after weighing different proposals for a new facility, including Cirrus’s proposal and a competing proposal to be made by hospital administrators.
The hospital board can seek a general-obligation bond at any time after that, Pease said.