SAN FERNANDO : Hospital Expansion Plan Tied to Lien

A $4.2-million expansion planned for the 70-year-old San Fernando Community Hospital depends on the outcome of negotiations between city and hospital officials over a lien held by the city on the hospital property.

Phil Boozer, the hospital’s chief financial officer, said the hospital gave the city a “reversionary right” that allows it to take title to the hospital in seven years in return for lending its name to a municipal bond issue that financed the hospital’s last expansion in 1978.

Boozer said the city must release the right for the hospital to obtain financing. The city is willing to compensate the city in other ways, including establishing urgent care centers citywide to provide medical services at little or no cost to residents.

“There’s no inference the city should just give away this right,” Boozer said in an interview. “We’re looking to put an investment of $4 million refurbishing something that’s an institution in the community. We feel we have some real valuable proposals.”

Boozer and other hospital officials appealed to the San Fernando City Council Monday to help hammer out an agreement. The council formed a subcommittee to meet with hospital officials in coming weeks.

Councilman Doude Wysbeek, a member of the subcommittee, said the council will have to decide an important issue: “Is the hospital an asset to our city or is raw land an asset to the city?”

Under the expansion, the oldest section of the San Fernando hospital would be demolished and replaced with a two-story facility that would increase the number of beds from 52 to more than 70.