Letters to the Editor

Pandora’s box revisited

Editor: Living directly across the street from the hospital, my family and I have more than just a casual interest in the future hospital’s site selection. Over the past ten years, we’ve put up with semis idling at 4 a.m., hospital employees flicking lit cigarette butts into the street, the “accidental” dumping of toxic substances into the creek behind our home including a late-night attempt to clean up the mess before dawn –– not exactly the kind of neighbors you want to see buy the vacant lot next door (the Carnalli site). Many neighbors have their own stories.
Like any neighbors, you make friends with some, call some out when they infringe on your privacy and rights, share extra fruit and flowering bulbs during the summer, visit the same houses every year for Halloween, work together to create a safe place for your family.
I voted for the parcel tax because our town deserves a local hospital. I paid attention to the architects’ summary of the Carnalli site as being too small for any future expansion. I listened to the well-respected Steering Committee’s overwhelming support of the Broadway site. Suddenly, the day before Thanksgiving, giant jackhammers are pounding away at soil samples in –– near, my backyard. What’s going on? A few of us must have complained so the new CEO sends us all a letter stating the board has acquired the Carnalli site and “acknowledges he could have done a better job of communicating with the neighborhood.” You don’t need to pay me $80,000 in consulting fees to conclude that this is a bad way to begin support for the future hospital bond. A “medical campus” with our houses in the middle?
Retro-fit the old hospital; we’ve gotten used to the “song of the semi’s,” the hospital employees all wear nicotine patches now, and my boys noticed the crawdads’ return to the creek this spring; not ready for 5 years worth of new construction for a new hospital we can’t afford and future helicopter pad built in bird’s-eye view of our bedroom.
Cliff Zyskowski and family
Sonoma

Editor’s Note: This letter, addressed “Get with the picture, Gina,” was sent to the Sun.

When the voters of California passed Proposition 13, it set the property tax rate of $1 per each $100 of assessed valuation for all property owners in that state. It doesn’t make any difference if you live in Los Angeles, Death Valley, Modoc County or Sonoma, every property owner pays the same rate.
In Sonoma County, 52 percent of the total tax collected goes to schools; special districts get 9 percent; the incorporated cities get 11 percent and the County gets 28 percent. All city property owners do pay for county services, the same as you, for the court system, the jail, the programs of the County Departments of Health Services and Human Services, restaurant inspections. The City’s franchise agreement with Curotto (Sonoma Garbage Collector) pays fees for the use of the dump. The City also helped pay for the construction of the Sonoma Valley Library and it pays all the charges for the conduct of the city elections.
On my tax I also pay the following County charges:
Sonoma Valley Sani-Sewer: $578
MS Sonoma Mosquito #1: $10.72
Sonoma County Junior College: $31.12
WS Dam-Russian River Project: $8.72
The Sonoma Valley Hospital is a district hospital. The district boundary is from San Pablo Bay in the south to Kenwood in the north and from the hills in the west to the hills in the east. The population of Sonoma is about 9,400 plus. The Sonoma Valley population is about 35,000 plus. I’m presuming, based on population, that there are more county residents who receive treatment at Sonoma Valley Hospital than City of Sonoma residents. Therefore wouldn’t it be logical that the County also contribute a sum of money to the hospital district since more county patients receive treatment there that City of Sonoma residents?
The ambulance service is part of the City’s public services. It is not a profitable service, having run in the red since it was first acquired from Mr. Norrbom. But the City feels it is a most necessary and desirable service to provide to the residents of Sonoma Valley. Many city residents as well as county residents subscribe to the ambulance service but still does not cover all the expenses of the ambulance service.
You also mentioned about the revenue in sales taxes that the City of Sonoma receives from all the folks who live outside the city limits but shop in the City. The City’s sales tax is one percent of the sales tax charged. For each dollar in sales tax collected by the City, the County get two and half cents. That is an agreement that the City of Sonoma has made with the county for many, many years. The County at one time received five cents of each $1 of the sales tax collected by the City. The County used this share of the City sales tax to pave the streets on the County side that surrounded the City, i.e., the west side of Fifth Street West, the east side of Fifth Street East, and the south side of East and West MacArthur Streets. Since these streets are now in the city limits, I don’t know how the County uses the money it receives of the City’s sales tax.
Now, I ask you, why did the Springs Redevelopment Agency pay over $1 million for the archway near McDonald’s? That archway does nothing to enhance the entryway to Boyes Hot Springs in my opinion.
Eleanor Berto
Sonoma

Editor: We think CEO Gerlach is doing a good job trying to stop the financial bleeding at the current hospital, exploring innovative ways to create a profitable facility while, at the same time, being charged with the difficult task of determining how best to address issues with the existing hospital. While his heart is in the “right place”, the location for a proposed new hospital is in the “wrong place”. “Save our Neighborhood” is pro-hospital and we support retro-fitting or rebuilding the hospital on the existing site and this can be done without needing to spend $6.9 million for new parking at the Carinalli site as is being talked about by the board.
It is time for the hospital board to be honest with the community and stop referring to the proposed hospital site location as the In-Town Option (ITO). Call it what it is: the “In-the-Neighborhood” plan.
For people who conveniently overlook facts that don’t support their own Nimby/Nimfy view, the Carinalli property is not next to the current hospital. No, the property is in an established neighborhood, surrounded by numerous homes built between 20 and 50 years ago and no one – no one – bought or built homes expecting this residentially zoned property would someday be considered for a “hospital campus.”
I would gladly sell my home to any ITO supporter or anyone who openly praises the horrendous design, looking more like a prison, shoe-horned onto the property, as an “improvement” to our neighborhood. Board member Bill Boerum, an outspoken supporter of the site and recent architectural renderings was for once without words when I offered to sell him my house at a recent Hospital Board meeting. Well, Bill and other supporters of the In-the-Neighborhood Plan, it’s obvious, you wouldn’t want to buy or live in a home next to or across the street from a hospital! But, you would be happy for me to continue to live there or have someone else buy it at a greatly reduced price.
The specter of hospital construction will continue to hang over this neighborhood for the next 5-10 years, meaning we will all be prisoners in our own homes, unable to get away from the construction, traffic, noise and countless other distractions that will ruin our quality of life. The ITO crowd, so rabidly outspoken in opposition to using eminent domain and the “taking” of the Leveroni property apparently has no problem with “taking” the equity that we have built up in our homes through loss of property values. Why is that?
More and more, the hospital board is sounding like a mouthpiece for the old guard of the ITO crowd who have seemingly high-jacked the hospital site selection process. Curiously, once the hospital board was stacked with lieutenants of the Pro-ITO crowd, the Broadway site, overwhelmingly favored for the new hospital, was suddenly rejected in favor of the Carinalli property. People that I have spoken to wonder if something under-handed went on behind-the-scenes. The community should take a closer look at what has transpired before voting for the hospital board’s planned $200 million white elephant.
Thomas Mix,
Sonoma
“Save Our Neighborhood”