County Hospital Project Receives Go-Ahead

Heating up an ongoing war between the county and a private hospital, Ventura County supervisors Tuesday unanimously approved a $28.7-million project they said is vital to keeping the county hospital running.

Following the board’s action, a Community Memorial Hospital spokesman said the neighboring hospital is considering several options--including another lawsuit or referendum drive--to block the county project. Officials will announce their intentions at a press conference this morning, spokesman Doug Dowie said.

Over the protests of Community Memorial representatives, supervisors gave the go-ahead to building a two-story structure to replace the 75-year-old Ventura County Medical Center’s dilapidated kitchen and medical laboratory. The project also calls for a three-story parking garage.

Community Memorial attorneys argued that the board was going against the will of voters, who defeated a $56-million county outpatient project in March. The nonprofit private hospital, fearing the county project would draw patients away, spent more than $1.6 million on the Measure X campaign.

“The voters said no last March, and you should honor that,” attorney Jim Prosser told the board. “All you’ve brought back is the same project. And the strategy is divide and conquer.”

But supervisors argued Tuesday that the new project is significantly different from the original proposal: It is two stories, instead of five, and contains no walk-in clinics. They contended Community Memorial is using highly paid attorneys to mislead the public as part of a larger campaign to shut down the county hospital.

“It’s hard for me to understand how anyone--or even a group of attorneys from Sacramento--would be against providing a kitchen and a lab that is safe,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “The present two are not safe. It’s been laid out very clearly what is needed and why it is needed.

“In my 20 years on the board I’ve never seen such a confrontation such as this one,” Flynn said. “CMH has conducted an aggressive campaign against this board to submit, to give in. They have used falsehoods. And they’ve hired big legal political guns from Sacramento to do it.”

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Supervisor Judy Mikels said the board had to approve the project because the hospital’s old and cramped kitchen and medical laboratory are structurally unsafe and therefore threaten the hospital’s accreditation.

“This is the right thing to do,” she said. “I have employees in that hospital that have to be kept safe and, believe me, it ain’t safe. What would happen if somebody were injured over there?”

The medical center campus, spread along two blocks of Loma Vista Road in Ventura, serves 2,000 employees but has only 900 parking spaces, supervisors said. The new kitchen and cafeteria would be large enough to accommodate employees and patients at the hospital, they said.

About $17 million of the $28.7-million project cost would be paid with state and federal grants, with the remainder coming from the county hospital’s budget and the county’s general fund.

Community Memorial representatives said they believed the project is the first of a multiphased development that would eventually include a new outpatient center at the public hospital about two blocks away.

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Laura Dahlgren, a Community Memorial employee and spokeswoman for hospital’s campaign, said the Board of Supervisors had refused to work together to find the best way for both hospitals to deliver health care efficiently.

“We object to this project because you have shut the door to genuine negotiations with a not-for-profit community hospital,” she said. “You kept those doors to negotiations locked tight.”

But Schillo said this was not true. He said he and Mikels had met on five occasions over the past several months with members of Community Memorial’s board of directors to discuss merging some health-care services and perhaps even the hospitals in the future.

Schillo said they knew the county wanted to replace its kitchen and medical laboratory before working out any further details to a joint-operating plan. In fact, Schillo said, he was under the impression from a meeting last Wednesday that parties from both sides were in agreement.

“I’m really aghast in what I perceived to be an effort of cooperation,” he said. “Their board members say they want to work together. And [their attorneys] are saying, ‘We want you out of business.’ It seems to me like the CMH board has lost control of what’s going on.”

Meanwhile, county officials said they would not be surprised if Community Memorial files another lawsuit against the county or wages another referendum campaign to halt the county hospital project.

“I’m sure it’s going to get ugly,” Supervisor Mikels said. “We’re like the little tiny guy fighting the giant. It’s one of those situations where we can’t control what they’re going to do. But I believe if my constituents know the truth about this project they will support it.”

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NEXT STEP

Now that the Board of Supervisors has approved the hospital project, the matter goes to the county’s Public Facilities Corporation, which oversees financing for county building projects. Within 30 days, the panel is expected to vote on issuing $28.7 million in bond-like certificates to pay for the project. If approved, the certificates would be sold within 60 days.