Local News

June 26th, 2008

Five New Exhibitions at California Center for the Arts, Escondido

Five new exhibitions, featuring the work of local artists, will be shown for the first time at the Center Museum beginning this Saturday, June 28th and running through November 30th. A reception will be held Saturday, from 6pm to 9pm, for: Active Duty, Contemporary Ruin, United and Severed: That Window of Time, Shannon McNeill: Little Drawings, and Warning Signs. Tickets are $10 per person for non-members, free to members, and includes admission, live music, cocktails and hors d’oeurves.

We take note of two of the five exhbitors:

Owen Mundy’s Active Duty	Shannon McNeill’s Little Drawings

These two works offer a dramatic look at two interesting venues. Bundy’s work is based on active duty and retired military; McNeill’s work has appeared in magazines and children’s book worldwide and tends to be smaller in scale, as she says, “welcoming the viewer to get close, be quiet, and stay awhile.”

The Center Museum, widely recognized as one of San Diego County’s premier visual arts venues, features three galleries, and a sculpture court. The indoor exhibition space totals 9,000 square feet, controlled access for natural light via skylights, and 24 hour computerized environmental and security controls. With a heavy emphasis on art of this region, the Museum also features nationally and internationally known artists and traveling exhibitions. The Museum offers public programs, outreach education programs, and exhibitions.

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum, is located at 340 N. Escondido Boulevard and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 40m, Sundays from 1pm to 5pm. They are closed on Mondays and major holidays. Admission is $5 Adult, $4 Seniors, $3 Students with ID. Children under 12 and Center Members are free.

EMPAC Seeks Special Election on Term Limits

On Monday, June 16, Donna Martin, President of EMPAC (The Escondido Mobile/Manufactured Home Positive Action Committee), and EMPAC Board Members presented a Notice of Intent to Circulate A Petition and Request A Special Election on Term Limits for the City of Escondido Mayor and members of the City Council.

This ordinance would place a limit on the number of consecutive terms which may be served by a council member or mayor.

New Palomar West Hospital Having to Scrimp

When voters approved a $496 million bond measure to build a new hospital, little did they realize, possibly because they weren’t told all the facts, that the money would not be nearly enough to accomplish the goal.

District officials swear up and down that the plans remain the same, but runaway costs have slowed their plans. Local skeptics have doubted for the past three years that PPH would ever be able to deliver on their assurances to the electorate.

The San Diego Union Tribune, in a story this past weekend points out that “Palomar Medical Center West, the new hospital, originally was projected to cost $531 million. That ballooned to $690 million in 2006 and is $773.7 million by current estimates, even after numerous cost-cutting changes. That's $21 million more than what the district said it would cost to build everything after Proposition BB passed in November 2004.

The entire expansion package is now expected to cost at least $1.15 billion, which the district says it hopes to cut to $983 million over the next five years by delaying the completion of some projects until after 2013 and constructing other buildings as partial shells.”

Doubters of Palomar Pomerado Health district's ability to afford its renovation plan include Escondido residents Wally Gutierrez, Larry Michel and Robroy Fawcett. Critics question whether the district will ever have enough money to finish what it promised, particularly the renovation of Palomar Medical Center, considered by many to be important to the financial health of downtown.

“I see a financial house of cards,” said Robroy Fawcett, an Escondido resident who has been tracking the district's progress for several years by requesting meeting agendas, financial reports, property records and other documents, and posting them on a web site, at civics.robroy.cc.

Palomar Pomerado has said it no longer has the money to open a women and children's health center at Palomar West when the 11-story hospital opens in July 2011. The hospital originally was scheduled to open in 2010.

It means the hospital will have 300 beds when it opens, with space for 60 more, not the 453 originally planned. Palomar Medical Center in downtown has 324 beds. To save $43 million, the district plans to have a developer build its central plant to provide electricity, heat and air conditioning, and then lease it. Outpatient services buildings and parking structures, which weren't included in the original cost, also could be leased from private developers that build them or could be built through partnerships.

Last year, district officials said completing the women and children's center would likely require that Palomar Pomerado issue up to $100 million in revenue bonds, which are different from bonds that require voter approval. Construction of the center is being pushed back, district officials said, and its opening date is unknown.
What about downtown?

All these cost-overruns, changes and delays have prompted Fawcett and two other Escondido residents, Wally Gutierrez and Larry Michel, to predict that plans for the downtown Escondido hospital will be lost in the shuffle. Four years ago, district documents listed $73 million as the budget for the downtown project, the three men point out. But that amount of money has since been reduced. The latest budget is down to $20.8 million for two warehouses and buying three properties – none of it to pay for the healing gardens, pedestrian pathways, stone-covered buildings and magnet high school the district talked about in detail in 2005.

Fawcett, Gutierrez and Michel – whom district officials have labeled “the naysayers” – don't believe the district can accomplish the downtown project. The three have appeared before the City Council and other community groups to express their doubts.

Gutierrez said he is worried that plans for downtown will become “best intentions” because the district won't have the money. District officials insist they intend to deliver on their downtown vision – eventually.

Completing the vision takes time, Hoang said, and Palomar Pomerado has taken steps to move forward with downtown. A piece the district is working on is remodeling a building on Grand Avenue that will temporarily house some corporate offices. It's one of the properties the district has bought.

The district's current solution pushes costs well into the future: The main tower at Palomar Medical Center would be used as the women and children's center at least until 2015, if the state grants an extension because it does not meet earthquake standards. That would allow the district more time to raise money for the center at the new hospital and redevelop the old hospital into a medical, retail and housing complex.

The district plans to pay off its existing debt for Palomar Medical Center in 2018, and could issue more bonds after that, officials have said.

“We are not abandoning downtown,” said Hoang, the district spokesman.

That remains to be seen, said Fawcett, an attorney.

“I'm going to keep tracking it,” Fawcett said. “I want more sunshine on PPH's processes. None of us are going away.”

Palomar Pomerado Health Lays Off 86 Employees

Sources from within Palomar Hospital had told The Paper that approximately 140 employees have been laid off. Late Monday, Andy Hoang, official spokesman for PPH, sent us an email with the following information confirming the layoffs, but in a different number:

“The restructure does not affect any bedside positions - instead, administrative - management, part time and per diem roles.

67 full time positions
19 part time and per diem positions

Keep in mind, the new budget calls for the addition of 100 new nursing positions this fiscal year ... we are maintaining our clinical, technical and all of our support staff - 2,663 full time employees - a growth of over 240 in the last three years, while reducing managerial, administrative and clerical and non-patient care positions.

In a report to Wall Street last fall, PPH claimed . . . “As of June 30, 2007, the District employed approximately 2,700 productive full-time equivalent employees. Approximately 2,260 employees are full-time and 1,230 are part-time and per diem."

We continue to be profitable - we are not losing money. However, in order to continue our growth, investment in technology, recruit and retain highly trained physicians, nurses and support staff we had to make the difficult decision of restructuring some administrative positions. The Paper is advised by reliably informed sources that among those laid off are the Nursing Director of the Operating Rooms for the district, the Radiology Manager, and the Business Manager at Escondido Surgery Center.

We are unclear as of this writing why there is such a wide variance between the official report of 86 layoffs and the 140 claimed by reliably informed sources within Palomar Pomerado.

We shall continue to investigate this story.

Tri-City Hospital Bond - Opposition Forms

Tri-City Hospital board members voted last month to call the special, all-mail election, which calls for voters to support a $589 million bond measure.Not so fast, says Joe Brown, a former Tri-City Medical Center employee who led the fight against Tri-City’s two other unsuccessful bond measures in 2006.

The election, scheduled for August of this year, will fail if Brown and his colleagues have anything to say about it.

In a mantra eerily similar to that chanted by supporters of the Palomar Pomerado Health District in support of Prop BB, Tri-City officials say they need the bond money to renovate and expand the hospital ---- a massive project driven by a 2013 state-imposed deadline to retrofit or replace buildings that are vulnerable to earthquakes.

The money, they claim, would cover the essential parts of the hospital's $778 million construction master plan, officials have said. Other pieces of the project would be deferred. Again, similar to Prop BB claims.

Brown's fellow bond critic, Carlsbad resident Dr. Gary Gonsalves, said Tri-City should tighten its purse strings instead of putting another bond measure on the ballot. The district's last two measures narrowly failed to get the required approval of two-thirds of the district's voters.

Voters will receive their ballots in late July and have until Aug. 26 to return them.