Hospital Board discusses site selection

The hospital board meeting last weekwas called to review the board’s recent selection of the so-called “In-Town” site, and passion was not in short supply. The board did not so much revisit its decision, especially with two of its members absent, as it did offer up its staff to provide full detail of the information that went into the decision.
A presentation by Barry Swenson Builder had been on the agenda, to review for Board consideration two plans for use of the Broadway site. Bennett Martin, representing Swenson, indicated that the request for that presentation was premature. He said his group had met with hospital CEO Carl Gerlach and would do so again soon, to be ready for a presentation in late November or early December.
Peter Haywood spent a full 45 minutes describing who spoke to whom when. He was one of five people on the Negotiating Committee, charged in June of this year to secure as much land as possible both at the in-town site and at the Broadway site, inside the Urban Growth Boundary. Full details were provided, including discussion sequences, option payments, and parcel sizes. Haywood also described the request of the Carinallis that those negotiations be kept secret until, and unless, they were successfully concluded.
The more vocal of the 50-strong audience grew impatient with Haywood’s deferral of decision and design questions to later presentations, and Gerlach took the microphone to address those questions, most coming from a number of residents within a block or two of the newly acquired Carinalli property. Some were mollified by the reduced scale of Gerlach’s latest plans for that site, and most were satisfied with his mission of stopping the hospital’s operating losses “here and now.” He meant within months, else the hospital close. (“Have you seen our bottom line recently? We’ve been sucking air.”) And he meant using the existing facility, as any new facility is at least 7 years from completion.
Board member Arnie Riebli, who rose from his seat late in the meeting to defend the integrity of Gerlach, was shouted down by members of the audience over his choice of language to describe the results of past decisions by an earlier hospital administration and board. Gerlach reminded the audience that polling data was very clear about what level of taxation the community would support, and he made the case that costs at the Broadway site, which would require that all elements of a health care center be constructed at one time, would greatly exceed that level.
Gerlach’s conclusion was that the best course would be to build at Carinalli a core structure to provide just those in-patient services that do need to be located next to each other, using the existing facility for administrative offices and other non-patient functions. The cost for this is expected to be less than the previous ballot measure. As other, out-patient services grow and can justify separate financing, they could support construction of new facilities, in a later phase. A new “MOB” (medical office building) is not in the plans now, nor is it likely to be in any early construction phase.
The meeting ended with no particular resolution, as no action items were on the agenda, other than a reminder that some bond measure will be on the ballots in the spring, and a continuing commitment to share developing design information with the public.