You can see for your self the picture heading the Take this week of Jay Tappan CHD board chair appears to be rather blurry. I did this deliberately to stress that the whole hospital proposal has been nothing but a changing and contradicting blur ever since the people voted for a Critical Access hospital way back in 2004. The board has gone from a Critical Access hospital to a small community hospital to an urgent care facility, to a clinic, to a rural hospital. To what the hell is next on the long list of name changes. Many others and I have been involved in trying to correct this boondoggle for 6 years and even we cannot keep up with the constant ever changing classification.

The board would not allow the initiative that was brought forth legally to take away the boards tax revenue to be put on the ballot for the March election, they would not allow the ballot measure in May either, finally they agreed to the November election, why is this board so afraid to have the voters revote on the hospital issue, is it because now the voters are fully aware how they were hoodwinked? And the board is afraid of losing their endless revenue?

This board continues to spend the taxpayers money on appeals to the state of Oregon who have twice denied the boards application for a certificate of need. The hospital board claims that they have moved ahead very cautiously only hiring the best consultants and verifying feasibility. First of all I have to agree they have hired only the best consultants, these consultants know when they have met a cash cow and I don't blame them in milking the health district (taxpayers) out of as much moola as they can before the old cow dries up. And this may come sooner than later when ballot measure 5-209 passes come the election in November.

The board states they are verifying feasibility, good God how many times are they going to rewrite and add and subtract numbers to try and crunch the numbers to come up with a feasibility study that will pass the states criteria. Every time they appeal, go back to the drawing board they spend $$$$$ of hard earned tax dollars. The board jumped the gun on development of facility property against the sound advice from the state of Oregon this blur cost the taxpayers $2.2 million in tax dollars. The other $2 million has been spent on consultants, appeals, road trips over paid hospital spokesperson Pam Pulliam, and hospital propaganda.

They claim that the facility if built would produce jobs for local people; they fail to tell everyone how many local people will lose their jobs that work at the Legacy clinic in St. Helens, because Legacy said they would shut down if this blur of a facility was built.

Every one knows the community cannot sustain a hospital, we had a nice hospital once and it folded because it was not sustainable. Why should we continue to throw good money down a rat hole? I say stop wasting tax dollars and repeal the unfair hospital tax that will continue on if not stopped, so if you want the taxes to stop.