Health District Is Under Fire

Should taxpayers here fund a nutritional cooking school, classes on hypnotherapy and menopause, and an $84,000-a-year health care administrator?

No, says taxpayers’ advocate H. Jere Robings, who wants the grand jury to investigate the spending practices of the $1.4-million-a-year Camarillo Health Care District that he wants to see shut down.

The attack by Robings, head of the Ventura County Taxpayers Alliance and a likely Assembly candidate, has mystified district officials.

Health officials say they run dozens of innovative programs, following the trend in health care toward teaching people how to stay well rather than treating them after they get sick.

“Health care districts and hospital districts are now finding that acute care is not where it’s happening,” said district director Jane Rozanski, whose $84,000 yearly salary Robings questioned.

“It’s happening in preventive care and wellness, and in taking it into the communities, into the churches, into the schools and doing the type of educational things we do.”

But Robings said Wednesday that the Camarillo Health Care District is making poor use of public dollars.

“I’m sure it’s providing some services,” said Robings, president of the 250-member alliance. “Whether it justifies a million dollars of tax money is another question.”

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, Robings points out.

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He wrote a letter to the new Ventura County Grand Jury on July 14, saying: “We believe the benefits provided by this district do not justify the cost. . . . This special district has outlived its original purpose, but has found new programs and reconfigured itself to justify its existence.”

Robings says district residents should not be shelling out nearly $1 million in taxes a year for costs such as these:

* The purchase of a Las Posas Road restaurant last summer for $76,000, to be used to teach people with special diet needs how to cook.

* A glossy 26-page “Health Attitudes” newsletter.

* Rozanski’s salary and $200-a-month stipend for in-county travel.

* Health classes, for Camarillo residents, with titles such as: “Hypnotherapy, a Holistic Approach to Modern Problems,” “Menopause--Ready or Not,” “Thinking of Divorce?” “The Ins and Outs of Microwave Cooking” and “Learn to Read Those Labels.”

“The programs they provide, I think, are duplicative of what the county might provide or what private health agencies . . . might provide,” Robings said in an interview Wednesday.

But district officials said the services are vital, economically run and unique.

“We encourage the grand jury to come and see who we are,” Rozanski said.

Last year, the district served 14,400 clients, many of them elderly and in need of services that were not provided by other agencies, she said.

District programs gave free flu shots to 600 people, cardiopulmonary resuscitation lessons to 450 and medical transportation to 400 people who might otherwise have missed visits to the doctor, said Craige LeBreton, the district’s chief operating officer.

“Not only are we not duplicating other services, we have any number of agencies that are providing funding to us for our programs that they cannot handle,” LeBreton said, citing contract services that the district provides for the Area Agency on Aging, state Department of Transportation and Kaiser Permanente.

The “restaurant” was a 600-square-foot former luncheonette, LeBreton said.

“We took that and remodeled it after the design of dietitians, nutritionists, medical doctors and others in the medical field,” he said. “[They] said, ‘We need a place where we can teach people how to deal with their nutrition needs, who have special problems such as diabetes, heart condition and cancer.’ ”

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Rozanski said her salary is set by the five-member district board of directors, who match it to the rates being paid to CEOs in similar jobs.

As for Robings’ overall criticism, LeBreton said, “To my knowledge, Mr. Robings has not talked to, visited with or gathered information from anyone on staff here.”

Some community leaders seemed irritated by Robings’ attack, which equates the health care district with another much-criticized special assessment agency, the Moorpark Mosquito Abatement District.

“This is totally out of left field,” said Randy Churchill, a Camarillo Realtor and member of several community service boards who also sits on an advisory panel for the district. “I’ve just had so many positive reactions [to the district] in the community and seen them as a positive for us.”

Churchill said the district provides day care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, medical emergency alarms and other services for the elderly.

The nutritional cooking school also serves as a multipurpose community meeting room, he said.

And as for the classes targeted by Robings, he said: “ ‘Thinking of Divorce’--well, in my real estate profession, thinking of divorce is something that happens. And menopause--as a male, I haven’t gone through it--but I’m quite sure that it’s important to many females.”