This community opinion was contributed by George Fendler. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
In a democratic system, it is imperative that the management of our resources occur in public with full transparency. I have been trying to make sure that our board does the right thing for the community for several years at these meetings. My impression of these meetings is that there have been very few people in favor of selling all of the healthcare district’s assets and very many people opposed to this sale. I wanted to go back through the minutes of the meetings and see who was in support of the board’s decision to sell and who was against it. That’s when it hit me. The public comments aren’t recorded in the minutes!
If you study the minutes you find things like “a discussion of the transaction”. If someone wanted to review what is going on they would find that, without exception, anything concerning selling to Insight Healthcare was approved by a unanimous vote. Usually there is little description of the discussion that preceded that vote. The glaring absence in the historical record is any of the input from the residents. At many of these meetings there has been a great deal of input from community members (divided up into whatever the commenters could squeeze into 3 minutes). This has led to some meetings lasting very long.
The people have a right to participate in the decisions. That’s why I created a simple one-page survey that I hope everyone will take. Please let us know what you want our elected directors to consider before making the final decision. You can find the survey at:
http://keephazelpublic.org/survey.html
It’s not very sophisticated, just a few simple questions (no requests for money) just trying to find out what THE PEOPLE want.
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