Much Ado about the Wrong Thing

Certain folks have been making a big deal out of the frustration experienced by a long-time, local family in not landing a deal with Sonoma Valley Hospital to build a new hospital on their land. It must have looked to the family, as it did to us, that the hospital administration was committed to making the Broadway site work and therefore had to have their property. So they drove a hard bargain – perhaps too hard, as it turns out. The hospital developed an alternative site and decided not to pursue the more complicated deal that the family’s developer had put together.
The hospital board and administration may not be easy to deal with (remember how long and messy the Cirrus negotiations were), but dealing with a public agency is seldom easy. Nor should it be, frankly. When public money is involved, the negotiators are generally not the decision makers. That is, the administration negotiates, but the board decides. That makes the process protracted and at some point public, and if the administration has developed some choices for the board, then ultimately it’s disappointing, too, for one party or another.
At the worst, the hospital administration was guilty in this case of trying to orchestrate a public relations win for the board, by making the site selection look like an easy choice. The logic of their public presentation was roughly this: first, we’ve been negotiating for a new site for the year and half since Measure C and it gets more expensive the longer we wait; second, we can consider only what we actually control, through options or outright ownership; and third, the small size of the actual Broadway property under control drives up costs.
Unfortunately, the administration didn’t tie down that last loose end, as the developer of the Broadway site still thought that was the preferred site. And in fact, as one board member pointed out after the meeting two weeks ago, all that’s really happened is a decision to buy the Carinelli property. The Broadway developer could, one supposes, come back with a different plan for the actual property in play.
Not that we agree with the board’s direction, mind you. We were reluctant converts to the hospital administration’s position in 2005 that the in-town site would have an adverse effect on quality of care because the medical office building would not be adjacent to the patient rooms; that led to our decision to support Measure C as the only viable option. Now, we’re being told by the experts that it doesn’t really matter. While we realize it’s a different team now at the hospital, that doesn’t soothe our growing skepticism of expert opinions.
Moreover, we have echoed doubts about moving forward with a big construction project at this date. Maybe the community doesn’t need to subsidize the hospital at about 10 million dollars a year by constructing a new 130+ million dollar structure to meet the state’s arbitrary 2013 deadline. Just two weeks ago, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 306, effectively relaxing that deadline by seven years, as many hospital districts were probably not going to meet it, anyway.
We like the direction that CEO Carl Gerlach is taking the present hospital operation, building cooperative arrangements with other hospitals to recruit physicians and purchase equipment. If those pan out, maybe we as a community will decide that it’s better to subsidize the hospital’s operations in some other way.
But it is the job of our elected hospital board members to manage our local emergency room and hospital resources. If they’re committed to putting another bond measure before the voters soon, that’s progress. We’re always happy to have such matters come before those who will have to pay, as we trust our readers’ collective wisdom.