Hospital board praises coalition's recommendations

The Sonoma Valley Hospital Board gave a ringing endorsement at its meeting Wednesday night to the Sonoma Valley Health Care Coalition and promised to vigorously pursue the coalition’s two proposed sites for a new hospital: in-town near the current facility and on the southeast corner of Broadway and Napa Road.
So enthusiastic was the hospital board that it gave its endorsement even before coalition member Gary Nelson made a Powerpoint-style computer slideshow presentation to the board.
“That was the most effective presentation that I ever made,” Nelson joked before his presentation had even begun.
Of course, board members had already received the coalition’s report several weeks ago.
Nelson touched upon such things as the fact that both sites recommended by the coalition would be inside the city of Sonoma’s urban growth boundary.
Initially, that wasn’t the case with the Broadway site, but the coalition reconfigured the site after discovering new parcels were for sale inside the boundary.
Board member Mike Smith said that without the coalition’s work, he didn’t think that the hospital would have been able recently to pass its parcel tax.
Meanwhile, board member Bill Boerum said that he and hospital chief executive officer Carl Gerlach met with an out-of-state developer named Tim Miller whom Boerum said has experience and expertise building health care facilities in California.
“We are exploring that as a possibility,” Boerum said.
Board president Dick Kirk added that any private developer proposing a partnership to build a new hospital would be asked to provide the same information as was Cirrus Health. The Dallas, Tex.-based hospital company had proposed to build a Sonoma hospital, but pulled out, citing differences with the hospital board.