Tome group celebrates hospital vote

September 21, 2009

Signs against the hospital project were removed.

The Historic Tome-Adelino Neighborhood Association last night briefly celebrated the Valencia County Commission’s vote on Wednesday to accept, in principle, the hospital lawsuit settlement offer from the case’s plaintiffs.

After the group’s board members spent the afternoon removing their hospital signs from along Highway 47, the board briefly addressed the vote, expressing appreciation for the work people like Rita Padilla-Gutierrez have done to protect citizens from the hospital project as it was proposed — too expensive, too expansive and in the wrong location.

In a conversation with Valencia! after the meeting, Fabian Padilla, the board’s chairman, said he had a lot of issues with the project and was pleased the commission will take a new look at it.

“We’re happy with the vote,” he said.

He said the signs he and others had placed along Highway 47 in opposition to the hospital project were removed to send a message to commissioners that they believe the commission is moving in the right direction.

The signs had been a flash point in the hospital issue, expressing messages for and against the hospital project. Many of the signs against the hospital project were vandalized but had remained in place in defiance of the vandals.

Padilla-Gutierrez said she, too, was happy with the commission’s vote because she sees commissioners now rethinking the issue, including Commissioner David Medina, who had been a consistent vote in favor of Valencia Health Commons, the group managing the hospital project, and the Rio Communities location.

The commission voted 4 to 1 last week to accept the settlement offer “in principle,” meaning the offer will need to come back to the commission for approval.

The offer wasn’t approved “in fact,” if you will, at the commission meeting for two reasons: first, the commission wanted to communicate with Valencia Health Commons to get a better understanding of its stance on the offer and, second, the commission requested some “tweaking” to the language of the offer, which must be run by the plaintiffs’ attorney.

If everyone agrees with the “tweaking” and Valencia Health Commons reacts in a way that gives commissioners enough confidence to move forward with the settlement, the commissioners will likely again take up the settlement offer at their first meeting in October.

Padilla-Gutierrez said the 4-1 vote in favor of the settlement at the last commission meeting should hold for the next two and a half weeks.

“I think it will,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”

Posted in: Hospital