Letters to the Editor

Broadway site was uncertain

Editor:The agreements offered by the Broadway site owners did not fully bind the Mary Zepponi Trust land for either use or purchase by the Hospital. But because of counter claims by those that stood to benefit financially from the sale, I outline below the efforts made on behalf of the Hospital by the Negotiating Committee so the public can better understand why the Broadway site was not selected.
The Zepponi and Serafini families wished to be the primary developers of both medical offices and Hospital administrative offices, and they wanted the Hospital to be responsible for leasing all the space. Their draft Letter of Understanding to the prior Hospital administration was never signed because it required the Hospital to pay rent on all of the office space that was built. But they did execute an agreement with the Hospital dated February 21, 2007, that granted the Hospital an “…exclusive right, through December 31, 2007, to enter into an agreement with the Trust” for the possible lease and/or sale of a portion of their lands. For this “Option,” the Hospital paid $100,000, but it was not an option to buy land, because it did not obligate the families to sell under any specific terms.
Our charge on the Negotiating Committee was to provide the Board with binding agreements that would control the hospital site once it was chosen. For the Hospital to enter into a development agreement on the Broadway property, the agreement needed to provide that the Hospital could purchase the remaining portions of the property, essential to Hospital operations in the event that the families were unable to complete their portion of the development. They were not willing to grant that right, and though the Barry Swenson development group thought they might be able to address this problem by including the families as partners, something the Hospital could not do.
The Swenson group presented the Board the day before its October 10 meeting a one-page “Agreement of Option” which provided for the purchase of the families’ 5 acres at the price of $9.5 million, $4 million above the appraised valuation. The document contained several conditional clauses, one of which gave the families a right to back out of the agreement. This would not have been a binding agreement. The Swenson Group submitted no additional project planning or financial materials for the Board’s consideration.
It is understandable that the Swensen Group might be disappointed that the Broadway site was not selected after they had worked hard to secure the land with encouragement from those of us on the Negotiating Committee. However, they were alerted by memos on September 24 that more documentation was essential and on October 2 that it was possible the Hospital Board would make a site selection on October 10. The Swensen Group has disputed the numbers presented by the Hospital consultants comparing the development costs of the In-Town and Broadway sites, but the simple fact remains that by October 10 the only adjacent land under contract was the 2.5 acres of the Cernobori land, less acreage than the In-Town sites which were secured by binding contracts and totaled over 10 acres when added to the land currently owned by the Hospital.
Peter Haywood
Member Negotiating Committee

Are blue and red more important than life?

Editor: I received a letter in my mailbox last week from the Sonoma Valley Unified School District. It retells the events of the gang shooting at Maxwell Regional Park on Monday, Oct. 22, and assures us that the victim and the suspects were not students from the District. Their intent is to reassure us, as parents, that they are, “not one of ours.” I’m concerned that if the victim and the suspect are 17 years old, and residents of the Sonoma Valley, why were they not enrolled in the Sonoma Valley School District?
This tragedy has deeply affected my family. I live just outside city limits across the street from Maxwell Park. We spent Monday evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. with helicopters circling, searchlights shining into our backyard, and a general feeling of fear for ourselves, our children and our guests on pumpkin carving night. By morning, we knew of the tragedy that had occurred behind the Boys and Girls Club in Maxwell Park. My two oldest boys go to the club every day after school. They participate in their sports programs, Smart Boys, Junior High Club and Sports Club. Sports Club runs from 6 to 8 p.m. every Tuesday. At about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, the day after the shooting, I drove by the club and noticed more than 50 young people gathered at the picnic tables in front of the Club. There were Sheriff’s cars nearby, but I was not close enough to see if there were officers where the children gathered. This gave me cause for concern regarding my children’s safety.
I called the local Sheriff’s substation on Grove to inquire whether they knew of the gathering, and if my children were safe staying at the club until 8 p.m., well after dark. They transferred me to dispatch, saying maybe dispatch would want to send an officer there to investigate. When I asked if my children were safe at the club, the woman at dispatch said that was a decision only I could make. There was not a trace of compassion; in fact, blunt disregard was her tone. She said that retaliation was a matter of when, not if. I asked her about the gathering, and she indicated they were not aware of any gathering. If it were an active crime scene, why would officers not patrol it? I made the decision to pick up my children from the club, and when I got there only three minutes later, there were in fact sheriffs present.
I feel forever changed by this gang violence. What if I choose to dress my 11-year-old in a red or blue polo shirt? What if he is walking from the bus into the Boys and Girls Club and is hit by cross fire from retaliation shots? What if I pull up at night to pick him up and shots ring out near our car? As the dispatch woman told me, it is not a matter of if, but when! Our community is new to the escalation of gang violence to gunfire.
It is disheartening to have a police force that shows no compassion, in fact irritation at being bothered with concern for children’s safety. And with a school district that is asserting our safety with the “reassuring” knowledge that the dead boy and the assailants “are not our students.” If they live in Sonoma, whose students are they? How have they been allowed to not go to school? What as a community are we doing to provide alternatives to gangs? What are we doing to defend our community against gang violence? How do we feel safe, knowing a 17-year-old boy will never become a man because the colors blue and red were more important than life?
Leah Johnson
Sonoma
Division in our community

Editor: Often times when there is a division in the community over an issue of prime importance, as is happening right now with the new hospital proposal site. The gap can sometimes be filled with opportunity seekers. This can hurt the community as a whole financially. Perhaps we can find another way of resolving this division. Reliable sources are pointing toward hospitable CEO Carl Gerlach as a wise and knowledgeable leader. Maybe we can end this rift by getting behind and supporting him and his capabilities.
Yudi Kebabjian
Sonoma

What really happened at hospital board meetings

Editor: All the talk about a disgruntled developer’s protestations is getting in the way of telling what really happened at the recent meetings of the Hospital Board. As one who was at all of them, I heard the following:
1. The Broadway site is too small to meet the hospital’s needs, short term or long term. In the end, only 7.5 acres gross were available at Broadway instead of the 17 acres originally promised. But, of that, 1.5 acres would be allocated to a private medical building (the developer’s condition) and another acre would go to the scenic setback and on-site roads, separate from parking.
That left a net usable acreage of 5 acres on Broadway – way too tight for the hospital’s needs and with NO room for a future replacement site.
2. The In Town site has 10.2 net usable acres (11.6 acres if you count the streets already in place). That’s twice as much land for the hospital as at Broadway. And the Carinalli site is available and an enforceable option is in place.
Additionally a full replacement site is available whether the new hospital is built on Carinalli or the present site. All utilities are in place, and 58,000 sq. ft. in the West Wing is suitable for hospital related functions. The East Wing also has 21,000 sq. ft. that complies with all California earthquake codes and can be used for acute care functions beyond 2030.
So, just on the basis of size, availability and amenities, the Board would have selected the In Town site, irrespective of any last-minute tweaking by the developer on Broadway. Other persuasive factors included:
3. The cost to the taxpayers would be higher at Broadway than In Town, with Broadway needing at least 6 years to implement, In Town 5 years. Based on $92 million escalated at 9 percent compounded annually, the difference to the public would exceed $16 million.
4. Annual operating costs at Broadway would be $3 million more than In Town. That’s a big number when multiplied by 20, or 30, or 50 years.
5. Broadway would require a large new medical office building; the In Town site would not. On the edge of town, none of the medical support facilities needed for a new hospital are in place. In town, most of the physician-owned offices and hospital support facilities are already in place.
6. As several Board members pointed out, the In Town site is closest to the center of the patient population served by the hospital.
Many people worked very hard with the Coalition over the past 18 months to get us to the point where a decision could be made. Now we need the help of local newspapers like yours to inform us on the facts and to help us unite as we take the next difficult steps toward implementation of the hospital that will serve us for decades to come. I, for one, hope you will rise to that responsibility.
Norman Gilroy
Sonoma