Yes on F

Fundamentally, we freely favor funding facilities for our future failing physical faculties.
And quite possibly, that’s the most you’ve heard about Measure F, the $45 million bond measure on our April 8 ballots. We also favor, fundamentally, transparency in actions taken by public agencies. That’s why we’re so excited about the coverage that SVTV Comcast Channel 27 gives to meetings of the city council, the planning commission, the school board, and the hospital board.
That’s also why we urge public agencies to take their proposals to the electorate and make their case. So-called “stealth” campaigns have backfired on the school district, twice. If the proposal is sound, the agency shouldn’t be afraid to give it maximum exposure in the marketplace of ideas. We voters are not unsophisticated.
The hospital board has taken a circuitous route just to get to Measure F. Since the disastrous Measure C effort two years ago, we’ve had “the coalition,” we’ve had competing experts pushing a variety of models, we’ve had flirtations with private developers, we’ve gotten wholly new management, and we’ve ended up, in the face of continuing cost escalation, with a proposed hybrid of new construction with some reuse of existing facilities, at an in-town site. But that route has been followed methodically, with assumptions challenged and costs weighed.
The present plan involves reduced risk at the tail end, by limiting overall construction expenditures. And it involves reduced risk in the beginning, by limiting bond authorizations until the present hospital operations prove themselves financially sound. If all goes according to plan, we buy the adjoining land now and plan in earnest, and then pass another bond measure when the operating model is proven and when the costs are better defined.
Voting Yes on Measure F is a prudent step toward preserving a vital part of our community: the local emergency room and hospital. We encourage support.
Hooligans: “Film at 11”
In the same way that TV stations don’t give live coverage to hooligans who interrupt a sporting event, lest more be encouraged, so too are we reluctant to give too much press to the man who used his three-minute public comment time at the beginning of the last city council meeting to hurl insults at one city council member.
Was that incident political, and therefore “okay”? Was it personal, and therefore not?
That’s a nuance that we in the U.S. face. Our political lives are based on freedom, but freedom isn’t free. Once won, it has to be guarded and defended. And ironically, its abuse constitutes an attack on itself, since our freedoms are not absolute. That is, our freedoms stop where your rights are infringed. Troubling times, when that boundary is pushed.
In our politics, we tend to call a truce between elections. We can still disagree with someone, but once that person has been elected, the will of the electorate should be respected. That is, disagreements shouldn’t be about the person any longer, unless there’s some moral impropriety involved. They can and should be, though, about the politics.
Not heard among the defenses offered for their fellow by other city council members was one conspicuous by its absence: “Hey, we’re just volunteers up here like you, trying to do our best for the community.” We don’t know that it makes any difference, but the thought crossed our minds that the relationship is just a little different, now that city council members are paid. There’s now a contractual relationship involved: it’s the council members’ job to sit up on the dais, and we members of the public are the ones paying their salaries.
Not that boorish behavior is ever justified.