The signs around town say ‘vote yes for emergency care’ but
there is much more to the hospital bond issue than emergency
care.
Editor,
The signs around town say ‘vote yes for emergency care’ but there is much more to the hospital bond issue than emergency care.
The emergency room and other basic care facilities do need to be expanded. Anyone who has ever used the facilities (and was lucky enough to find a parking place) can attest to that. But state-of-the-art medical care is better left to Stanford, UCSF, San Jose, Salinas and Monterey. Medical care is big business and extremely competitive. It is very questionable if Hazel Hawkins Hospital, even with improvements, can compete with the aforementioned, some world-known, facilities.
A business can only survive with enough paying customers to cover operating expenses. Not enough revenue and we will risk losing the local hospital completely!
The hospital board has been somewhat deceitful in only pushing the emergency need in front of our faces and omitting other pertinent information such as occupancy rate figures, financial statements and business plans. Mr. Machado, a HHH board member, refers to the population as ‘local yokels’, but the ‘yokels’ (shame on you Mr. Machado!) are being asked to come up with $31 million on a bond issue and subsequently $25 million in impact fees, which the Hospital Board has been extremely quiet about recently. A mighty big sum and still only an additional 75 parking places!
With our ‘no’ vote, we hope to send the hospital board back to the table to prepare a more realistic proposal for our approval.
Lavern and Elsie Browder, Hollister
