YORBA LINDA : Effort Fails to Block Psychiatric Facility

Despite pleas from some residents, City Council members again refused to try to block the conversion of Yorba Linda’s only general hospital into a psychiatric facility.

“This could be it,” said Sue McDougall, a leading opponent of the hospital. “We might just have to live with it.”

The dispute began earlier this month when residents who live near the Bastanchury Road site told the council they feared mentally unstable people would leave the hospital and roam through their quiet hillside neighborhood.

Yorba Linda officials have maintained that state laws prevent the city from taking any action to block the conversion of the former St. Jude Hospital to Yorba Hills Hospital, an 80-bed psychiatric center designed to treat people suffering from depression, drug addiction and eating disorders.

California law prohibits cities from making distinctions between mental hospitals and other types of hospitals; therefore, the Yorba Hills conversion does not violate the facility’s 1984 conditional-use permit, city officials said.

“We are hamstrung from taking any action,” Councilman Mark Schwing said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Nonetheless, hospital opponents, armed with a petition signed by more than 200 people and a letter suggesting that the council take advantage of a loophole in the state law to block the hospital, converged on City Hall on Tuesday night.

The petition urged the council to block the hospital. The letter, by Steve Brunette, an attorney who lives a few blocks from Yorba Linda Hills, asked the council to take action against the hospital by requesting a new environmental impact report or declaring the hospital a public nuisance.

“We wondered if we have to wait until the child is run over before they put up a stop sign,” Brunette said.

City officials said all the legal issues brought out in the letter had been considered by the city attorney before he advised the council.

An open house and tour of the hospital on Sunday drew more than 200 people; some residents who attended said that they didn’t mind having the facility in Yorba Linda.

Hospital officials stressed that the facility is not a state mental institution or prison and that Yorba Hills’ screening process would weed out potentially dangerous patients.

“We’re going to watch, wait and see what turns out,” Schwing said. “There’s just nothing we can do at this point.”