Letters to the Editor 3/16/06 Issue

Most ER patients don’t need surgery, intensive care

Editor: There is a highly misleading statement in the Save Our Hospital Measure C mailing, i.e. Sonoma Valley Hospital treated 10,000 emergency victims last year. The fact is, only 37 people a month required immediate surgery or admission to the intensive care unit.

This information was provided by the Save Our Hospital Committee campaign headquarters. Call 935-3501 to obtain the entire breakdown.Twenty-four local doctors signed and thereby concurred with this outrageous interpretation of facts, which makes one question the veracity of the other statements contained in this mailing, especially its conclusion.

Wendy Mitchell



Don’t seize Leveroni’s agricultural land

Editor: A number of letters favoring the hospital are from people who have experienced medical problems, such as cancer, and had the good fortune of receiving treatment and followup care at the Sonoma Valley Hospital; and from people who experienced emergencies, heart attacks and survived because of the hospital.

So it isn’t surprising that these people have bought into the fallacy we have been handed by the hospital board that if Proposition C does not pass, we will lose our hospital. These people are afraid and no one can blame them.What I am also reading from these letters are their beliefs that their personal benefits outweigh any hardships bestowed upon the Leveroni family.

The need for a hospital is real. Measure C isn’t deciding that need. Measure C is deciding whether we should take property by eminent domain.Are we really a small town, a close community? Show it. Put your personal agenda aside and vote “no” on Measure C, a vote against the seizure of the Leveroni’s agricultural land.

Dale Schieser


$8 million offer for hospital site not so generous

Editor: Much has been made of the “generous” $8 million dollar offer for 16 acres of Leveroni property. The Sonoma press, for example, has cited the recent purchase of the 152-acre Montini Ranch for $13.9 million as an important comparator, valued at only $91,000 per acre, a fraction of the offer price for the Leveroni parcel.

Press reports haven’t, however, mentioned the 4.75 acres of Montini property where something is actually being built. That acreage was purchased by the O’Brien Group in a private transaction. While the purchase price hasn’t been made public, the “assessed value” (which presumably is at or very close to the purchase price) is public: $4.9 million. At $1.03 million per acre, this is over double what was offered (and rejected by) the Leveronis.

Jim Cashel


Silence of the Land

Editor: The land rests in silence. It is for us to listen and then speak on its behalf. Sadly, we failed. There was no description of the land’s beauty, only of its ease of access. There was no reference to its open quiet space, only to its expandable parking area.

On Jan. 25, 2006, the Sonoma Valley Hospital District voted to expropriate farmland from the Leveroni family against their will and designate it as a future site for the new hospital. The hospital directors made the wrong decision. They chose the easy site, because the very characteristics that make the land special make it also easy to build upon.

The architects and pollsters spoke of their attempts to listen to public opinion, but the polling materials were hardly objective. Never did they mention the land’s value as farmland; that it was designated to be open space by both the Open Space District and the city of Sonoma. They never drew contrast by stating the visible fact that the two other sites under consideration had already lost both their open space and farming values; that the land to be taken against the will of a family had been farmed by that family for four generations.

Farming has been the principal use of land surrounding the city of Sonoma for all its history. Some farming uses are intensive. Some farming uses are gentle. All support the value and heritage of this historic town. The Leveroni land has laid quietly as a hay field for decades, proving a placid vista for the ever-more-active Sonoma community and a buffer for the Leveroni’s dairy business.

If they and other farmers are driven away, Sonoma will lose its priceless heritage and something will have gone out of us as a community.I do believe that the people of Sonoma, when they realize the extent of their loss in the forced taking of the Leveroni land, will not support this taking because this taking is not necessary. The reasonable choice is between the other two sites which are not farmland or valuable open space.

If the architects are told to make the Cuneo site work, I am sure they could. And, if the Romberg site is chosen, the agreement for extending utilities could prohibit other connections and thereby prohibit further development.There yet is time for the hospital directors to correct their mistake. The $148 million bond issue will not pass unless we are all behind it. If not this community, who will be the voice for the land? The time to speak is now.

Peter Haywood


Let’s try again

Editor: There is one undeniable fact that emerges from all the powerful letters I have read in our local papers.The fact is the current site just doesn’t work for the citizens of Sonoma Valley because there simply is too much opposition, which places a dark cloud over this project before it even materializes.

We simply cannot afford to make an enormous mistake we will be paying for far into our future.We need to face the fact that our hospital has been struggling for years. Census is down – again. Why would we transfer the same flawed administrative direction to a mega hospital and be billed top dollar for it?Our hospital is fully capable of being retrofitted. Hospitals up and down our state, which were built in the ‘50s, are being retrofitted currently.

People simply don’t have the money to pay to build new hospitals from the ground up. Most of us are not living at that affluent comfort level. Yet we will be financially burdened as though we were.Why not take the $8 million the hospital board supposedly offered to the Leveroni family and use it to retrofit our current hospital?And what about the property on Eighth Street East here in Sonoma?

Mr. Nugent of the hospital board says, “It’s practically in Napa.” It is a couple of miles from the Leveroni site, and the owners have spoken up, saying they are willing sellers. Another point – eminent domain. It directly violates all America stands for. We work hard to save and have a home we can call our own. That is our right. That is the American way. Is it right to allow it to be taken from us against our will? None of us are safe from eminent domain. Today a mega hospital; tomorrow who knows?

We, the citizens of Sonoma Valley, can join together to stop eminent domain by voting “No on Measure C” at our special mail-in election this April.There are alternatives, and we need to stop eminent domain and consider those alternatives.

Lavetha Judd


Join me to vote no on C

Editor: I am saddened and incredibly angry by the way the people of Sonoma are being manipulated and maneuvered by the hospital administration, the hospital board and the endorsements of the Sonoma Index-Tribune and city council. The people of Sonoma want and need a hospital! We have proven that by voting for the parcel tax. What we want is a hospital to accommodate the needs of the people of the Valley.

A hospital with an emergency room is a must, but certainly not the hospital size as proposed, not the medical plaza, not the massive parking garage and especially not eminent domain.My no vote on Measure C means that I definitely want a hospital with an emergency room, I will not be coerced into accepting larger-than-necessary facilities and I will not consent to the taking of the Leveroni property.Please join me in voting a resounding no on Measure C.

Janet Wedekind


New hospital costs heading to ‘stratosphere’

Editor: The questions that remain — even after all the nationally recognized experts and professionals have done their responsible studies and dedicated vetting — if the current hospital is not working out well financially, can it really be assumed that a more high-tech and expensive hospital will work out better financially? Or will the problem continue to be what it apparently is now: thousands of missing patients whose presence presumably would have helped keep things in the black?

Why has the hospital over the past 50 years failed so completely to keep itself upgraded so that it is now hopelessly out of date and good for nothing? Is this “responsible “ management and would any other business expect to survive taking that approach?

What assurances can be given to young families, middle-aged 9-to-fivers, retirees living on fixed incomes and other “everyday” Sonoma taxpayers that assessments won’t rise dramatically as has the proposed cost of the hospital (initially around $40 million, now around $150 million).Who can honestly and accurately predict what’s at the end of this yellow brick road we’re being led down there?

A fairly likely scenario: costs rising into the stratosphere, being paid by those who can least afford them.

Mary K. Pellegrino


Hospital’s real cost over $228 million

Editor: With Hospital Measure C, we now learn that we will be saddled with repayment of a staggering quarter of a billion dollars ($228 million) over the next 34 years should the bond measure pass. This is to build and pay interest for the Las Vegas-sized hospital that a handful of willful people have decided we need.

The proposed bond is not a parcel tax, it is an escalating tax that will place a huge burden on property owners in our small community.Add to this the fact that — should the bond measure pass — pristine land that has been in the Leveroni family and farmed for 85 years will be seized from them under eminent domain. This is reprehensible and should never come to pass.

The $100,000 advertising campaign presently appearing in the other newspaper and in the mail is created by the Hospital Board’s high-priced professional consultants who were also paid $83,000 to help advise the Board how to prepare for the campaign. Their ads and signs employ a contemptible scare tactic, leading us to believe that unless we vote their way, the hospital will close. I am told this is patently untrue, and that the present hospital can be retrofitted without undue interruption of medical services.

Many other hospitals including Santa Rosa Memorial have been upgraded in a similar fashion.The other paper has clearly taken sides and is brazenly pushing the new hospital. (What happened to factual and unbiased reportage?) It seems we now have only one impartial media source in town, The Sun.We all want a hospital in Sonoma. Not to would be foolhardy. But do we really need the Taj Mahal that’s being foisted on us, at such a colossal price?

Anthony Eglin


Here’s what hospital should do...

Editor: We keep the present site and buy the Cuneo property. That’s 10 acres in town to work with. We don’t invade the greenbelt, build a helipad or utilize the land for doctors’ offices.The Cuneo property must be built on with consideration for its neighbors.

It will be a functional hospital, scaled down to reflect the future draconian cuts in reimbursements from Medicare, Medical and private insurance companies, the rising costs of healthcare technology, salaries and the adverse effects of the relatively new health savings accounts and the ever-increasing number of people without healthcare.

The vision that Bob Kowal, the hospital’s chief executive officer, has for our hospital does not accurately reflect the true financial burden on our property owners.Our community needs Mr. Kowal to enthusiastically embrace our concept for a new hospital and to use all his knowledge and considerable skills to balance the present site with the Cuneo site to create one excellent hospital.

Bill Ferranti


Who’s going to build the medical office building?

Editor: Your March 2 issue carried a lot of news regarding the vote for Measure C.A letter to the editor by Ken Bowles clearly raised a question about who are the investors who will build the medical office building?

Who is the leader of that body? Is he or she a local medical doctor?To try to get an answer to the above, on Thursday, March 2, I visited the new office of the “Save Our Hospital Committee.”None of the very polite and helpful people in the office had any idea who was going to build the medical office building.

One person supposed that after the public has put up the money to build the new hospital, the land needed for the medical office building and associated 200 or so parking spaces will be leased out to this unknown body of owners/builders who will erect the medical office building at the same time as the hospital is built.

They will certainly stand to earn good money in their venture. California law, of course, does not allow public agency lands to be owned by a nonpublic entity this way, but apparently a public agency can lease out public land for a private purpose, according to our hospital board.I join those others who would like to know who is building the medical office building and also I hope that our local media is interested in the answer to this mystery.

Leslie Ayers