The board that runs the Columbia Health District never fails to amuse me with their never-ending attempt to bamboozle the taxpayers in the Health District. The people who proposed a Critical Access Hospital and presented their bill of goods to the not so savvy voter way back on election day November 2004, has once again changed what they are offering the public, now they have decided that they will go for a rural clinic. Wow! That is a far cry from the Critical Access Hospital that they ask the voters to approve in 2004 and a far cry from what they promised the public in medical care. Nearly 6 years later and close to $4 million dollars have been spent by this board in their magical quest to achieve clinic care for the residents of Columbia County.

What would possess these people to offer a clinic with a 2 bed urgent care? We have a nice clinic already with a lab and urgent care adjoining with 6 beds, in my calculations this would be a loss of 4 beds to the community. Why would any one want to spend $4 million dollars to downgrade what already exists? I could understand expanding the urgent care facility here in town by picking up the extra costs associated with running a 23-hour facility along with a contractual partnership with Legacy since they are already a working facility in St. Helens.

This board has no idea how to run a facility and I fear would be a detriment to the financial aspect of any facility. Hell they have already proved their ineptness with the money they spent so far with nothing to show for it other than a over priced piece of property which was gotten through bait and switch and screwing the parks department out of about $150,000.00 with their dealings with the City of St. Helens.

The boards apparent disregard for being frugal with the taxpayers dollars is apparent by the way they proceeded with development of the property on Millard rd. when in fact Columbia County land development department rejected the needed permits for site prep.( rules under certificate of needs regulations) And the certificate of Board people advised against this move to begin site prep, stating that the board was not guaranteed a certificate of need, also mentioning that $2.3 million dollars was a lot of taxpayer dollars to spend before they knew if they were to get their certificate. No problem for this board, they opened the taxpayers pocketbook and paid one of their attorney's on retainer to get the site prep language changed at the land development department by the way of the State of Oregon so they could proceed putting the cart before the horse. When in the end they were denied their certificate of need, and spent nearly $3 million on site prep.

Nothing this board has done has ever been logical, but then it is pretty easy to spend a never ending supply of money when the ballot measure will continue forever, even if a facility is never built, and will automatically increase 3% each year.

The people had enough of these clowns and collected way over the amount of signatures needed in a very short time I might add, to get on the ballot in front of the voters to stop the collection of money until the board is granted a certificate of need. Did the board respect the feelings of the voters in the district absolutely not, they paid one of their attorneys $5,000.00 to argue when the election would be held, money talked and they halted the March election and the May election. So much for democracy, those with the most money wins.
As the story continues, so does the willy-nilly spending of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully in November if the health district board allows an election we can stop this quagmire and begin again with something financially solid and sound.