Hospital making us sick

February 15, 2016

The financial audit is in for our county hospital’s 2015 fiscal year.

They lost $76.8 million which is far better than the $141.1 million they lost the year before.

CountyHospital2014

Luckily for them our property taxes gave them $68.6 million for maintenance and operations during that period.  They also got $17.2 million for us in property taxes to be used to make debt service payments.

While the county hospital exists to help people get well, I think it is fair that these numbers make many of us sick.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | County Government | Permalink
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Character, service, education

February 14, 2016

Thomas Marshall, vice president of the United States wrote this in 1919:

“The future of the Republic depends upon the character of its citizenship.  We are not building permanently unless the youth of the land are made fully acquainted with the meaning of American citizenship.  We must give patriotism a vitality which will find expression in service.  We cannot make democracy safe for the world by writing treaties.  The spirit of democracy must be in the minds of the people, and this means that they must understand the basic principles of democratic government.

Brutus

9 Comments | Federal Government | Permalink
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National government–2

February 13, 2016

Are there areas that our national government is not involved in where they should be?

Brutus

5 Comments | Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Backing your people

February 12, 2016

At a recent city council meeting a senior member of city staff made a presentation related to funding the west side swimming pool.

Evidently they were about a quarter of a million dollars short in funding.  The staffer started to make suggestions about how the money could be obtained.

One suggestion was to issue certificates of obligation.  Council said no.

Another was to kill other projects, specifically some recreation fields.  The district eight representative seemed to go ballistic.  Council then piled on and raked the staffer over the coals.

The city manager rode in on his white horse and offered to use some of the $9 million that he had “saved” us last year.

City staff rightly feels that they are getting beaten up for problems that the city manager could solve.

I heard one of them say the other day that he neither trusted nor respected the city manager.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

What do you have to do to get fired?

February 11, 2016

It appears that our county hospital board of managers gave our hospital administrator a $46,813 bonus for his performance last year.

As I recall the hospital lost its accreditation for a while last year over sterilization issues.  And we also can remember that they had to fire 56 people because of financial difficulties not long ago.  And then there is the “F” that a medicare rating agency gave them.  Let’s not forget the financial disaster with what used to be the children’s hospital.

The hospital board is out of touch.  The public can see the problem–the vivavalenti.com website shows 67 signatures on their petition to keep our current hospital administrator months after the petition was started.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

8 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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