Frustrated by the health district’s slow pace of dissolution and its continued spending on community health projects, petitioners redouble their efforts
UPDATE: Because of the coronavirus, the group organizing a petition to dissolve the district has cancelled their drive-by petition drive today. Petition gatherer Gayle Bergmann said, “We are advising folks to download the petition in letter form, fill it out, sign it and mail it in. https://drive.google.com/file/d/18IOI5njCl-qljyUvUmPIiYqrDFdGyhir/view.”
At the PDHCD board meeting on March 2, the board handed out a draft calendar for dissolution that showed the district dissolving by July 15 of this year.
Between now and then, the calendar spells out the slow bureaucratic steps involved in the unwinding of a 20-year-old public entity. (See calendar in the sidebar of this article at sonomawest.com.)
At the last board meeting, board member Richard Power expressed his hope that the board could vote on a resolution to dissolve at its March 2 meeting, but that was not to be.
Instead, there will be a draft resolution to dissolve, a submission of the draft resolution to LAFCO and the office of the Sonoma County Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector for comments, updates to the draft resolution, a notice of intent to interested parties of the district’s plan to adopt a resolution, and, at their May 4 board meeting, a vote on a final resolution.
Attorney Bill Adams, representing the district, gave a long and detailed explanation of the dissolution process, calling it “a tight timeline.” Some of the issues at play include how to turn the bankruptcy over to the county, what to do with medical records and how to wrap up the 26 contracts that the district currently has with other business and agencies
The response in public comment was scathing.
“You guys either oversimplify or overcomplicate, and over-complication is what’s happening now,” board watcher Michele McDonell said.
“To my mind, there’s a difference between doing the resolution and doing all of the activities that need to be done for the dissolution,” district opponent and former PDHCD board member Jim Horn said. “I don’t think anybody ever said that the dissolution would be simple. I think everybody recognizes there’s a lot of stuff to wrap up, but I do agree with Michelle, I think it’s being overly complicated.”
The basic disagreement came down to this: district opponents wanted the district to make a resolution to dissolve and then deal with the details involved in the dissolution application. The district intends to do the dissolution resolution and the dissolution application package together.
According to the district timeline, the district is scheduled to vote on the dissolution resolution and application package at its May 4 meeting and to submit the whole package to LAFCO on May 5.
LAFCO is scheduled to vote on the dissolution of the PDHCD at its July 1 meeting, with the actual effective date of dissolution scheduled for July 15, at which point, the district would become in the words of LAFCO’s Mark Bramfitt, “a dead parrot.”
One of the reasons opponents of the district want it to dissolve as soon as possible is the board’s continued spending on community health programs. At its March 2 meeting, it was revealed that the district had given out two more community health grants: approximately $15,000 to Park Village for counseling programs and $15,000 to the Community Cultural Center for a monitor for the Sebastopol Skate Park. (This latter grant drew particular derision from the audience.)
“How did these things get approved?” Board Member Richard Power asked. “When did the board vote on them? I didn’t vote on either of these things.”
It turns out that, at an earlier meeting in 2018, the board had granted PDHCD Executive Director Alanna Brogan the power to approve grants on her own, without a vote of the board, as long as she stayed within budgetary limits.
“Can we at least get an agreement to stop spending money?” implored Michelle Kelly, who during public comment identified herself as a new homeowner and taxpayer.
Horn pointed out several expenditures, including $200,000 for community services, budgeted in the next fiscal year — after the district is supposedly dissolved.
“There seems to be a basic misunderstanding of what happens when the dissolution becomes effective,” Horn said during public comment. “Once the dissolution is effective on June 30 or July 15 or whatever, all of the money at the district becomes the property of the successor agency,” namely the office of the Sonoma County Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector. “The county will use that money to administer the estate, if you will, and pay off the debts, and that’s it.”
“I don’t see any reason why you would budget these expenses: the county will do any accounting, the county legal team will do any legal services. And, in particular, the item down near the bottom of the few hundred thousand dollars for Community Services.”
Opponents of the district are particularly aggrieved by this item, which they view as the district illegally funding Gravenstein Health Action on its way out the door. They view this as illegal because they say its beyond the scope of Measure W, the parcel tax measure that voters passed to support the hospital.
“You’ve obtained an independent legal opinion about allowable uses of Measure W. You’re keeping it secret, claiming attorney client privilege,” said Horn. “The only reason I can see why you would do that is either the district has already spent money that it shouldn’t have or you want to spend money in the future that you shouldn’t. And what I see here is probably the latter. And I cannot believe or imagine that an independent opinion of Measure W would allow you to basically write a blank check for $200,000 for services that were not part of Measure W at all.”
After the meeting, the district’s opponents vowed to redouble their petition efforts to dissolve the district. The group had planned a drive-by petition drive on Saturday, March 14, but, because of the coronavirus, petition gatherer Gayle Bergmann said, “We are advising folks to download the petition in letter form, fill it out, sign it and mail it in. https://drive.google.com/file/d/18IOI5njCl-qljyUvUmPIiYqrDFdGyhir/view.”
The next meeting of the Palm Drive Health Care District board is April 6 at 5:30 p.m. in the conference room at Sonoma Specialty Hospital.
