Health Care District Closure Is Urged

Citing poor use of public dollars, taxpayers’ advocate H. Jere Robings is continuing to push city officials to shut down the Camarillo Health Care District.

But the City Council decided unanimously Wednesday night to steer clear of Robings’ attack plan against the local health care agency because of a potential grand jury investigation.

“The grand jury has started the process of deciding whether or not there will be an investigation, and if that’s what [Robings] wanted then it looks like that’s what is being done,” Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said.

Robings asked the grand jury to investigate the spending practices of the district earlier this month.

A grand jury subcommittee met with district officials last week and with Robings Wednesday before the council meeting.

The district offers preventive health care workshops, flu shots and medical transportation to residents.

Last year it served 14,400 clients, many of them elderly and in need of services not provided by other agencies.

But Robings, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Alliance, says taxpayers should not be shelling out nearly $1 million a year to a district that is no longer fulfilling the need for which it was created.

The district was set up in 1969 to tax residents and raise money for construction of Pleasant Valley Hospital.

But the district has since sold the hospital, which merged in 1993 with the large health-care chain that owns St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

“The point is that 28 years ago, fewer than 2,700 people voted to establish the district and it was specifically to build and operate a hospital,” Robings said.

“My question is, does the vote of 2,700 people 28 years ago saddle the city with the district in perpetuity?”

But Thomas McCoy, who recently formed the group Friends of the Camarillo Health Care District to save the district from being dissolved, says residents reconfirmed the need for the district’s services in the November 1993 election.