Your Voice
Nov 25, 2009 | 1031 views | 3 
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EDITOR,
A Nov. 6 editorial titled “City may have skirted meeting laws” discussed concerns the Irrigator’s editorial board has that are related to the conduct of open meetings and transparency in local government. Your concerns appear to be well-founded.
Regrettably, the Building Industry Association of Central California sued the city of Patterson over grossly exaggerated affordable housing fees in 2006. I say “regrettably” because with some cooperation from the city, the matter over which we litigated could have been easily resolved without going to court.
Through appeals and motions to the state’s 5th District Court of Appeal, the California Supreme Court and most recently the U.S. Supreme Court, the city of Patterson has expended untold thousands of dollars in litigation. We don’t know why the City Council and the city attorney fought so hard to keep a flawed fee program in place.
We researched the records of the city of Patterson to review the number of times the City Council has met in closed session to discuss our case: BIACC et al. v. City of Patterson.
Decisions were made to appeal and file motions. Yet, if city records are accurate, since the filing of this litigation in 2006, the number of times the City Council has properly noticed and met in closed session to discuss this case is once — in August of this year.
How does the council make such decisions without collectively reviewing and discussing the matter? Indeed, the results of the ruling by the appellate court were published earlier this year in the Irrigator. If the decision to move forward with further appeals was made by the council, it was done in a highly unusual manner.
If decisions were made outside of a properly noticed closed session, then the good citizens of Patterson have bigger problems than they might have imagined.
Steve Madison, executive vice president, Building Industry Association of
Central California
Patterson needs expanded health care
EDITOR,
I am writing today because I support “improving health care” here in Patterson. As a senior living in Patterson, I need to block out time to travel to my appointments in Modesto on a regular basis. The travel is not easy for me, and it is extremely time-consuming.
Now I hear there is a plan to offer some of those services here in Patterson. If this plan is passed by the City Council or the local voters, the Del Puerto Health Center will move into a bigger facility, hire more doctors and attract more health specialists. This will mean that I can schedule my appointments here and save hours of travel.
My husband and I have lived here in Patterson for nine years and needed emergency care three times. For example, my husband had 26 stitches in his forehead after he fell 14 feet from a ladder at home. We had to drive to Memorial Medical Center in Modesto. Another time was when he had just come home from an operation and the stitches in his stomach split open. At 8 p.m., we had to go to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock.
When I was going through my cancer treatments, I was rushed into emergency care. This was during the evening, and we had to seek help in Modesto. The clinics here in Patterson were closed. This is the reason why we need to pass the health care initiative.
Please support this initiative and expand health care here in Patterson. It will save time in travel and cost to seek medical care here in Patterson. It will benefit all of us.
Laura Bessette, Patterson
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As a former Del Puerto Health Center medical provider, please keep in mind what I have already said: the REAL problems in our delivery of health care to the westside are NOT about any one clinic's desire to move nor are they tied to the square footage of any one clinic. This is what is lacking:
A true vision for the fundamental provision of Primary Health Care manifested in the hiring and retention of Primary Health Care providers.
Extended hours for greater access to Primary Health Care.
Cooperation between ALL the health care providers in providing late hour or 24 hour urgent care with access to ALL westside residents.
Having had the honor of working with Dr. La Torre before he retired and seeing Dr. Lanfranki as a patient, I have been told of the days when these physicians along with Dr. Anderson and others would rotate to cover the Del Puerto Hospital ER. I do not see why there couldn't be a true collaboration of the various providers from the different clinics on the Westside to do something similar.
Regardless of where any one clinic decides to move, the problems that truly face Westside medicine lie not in the lack of clinical square footage, the lack of specialists or the lack of accessability to specialists. The problems are in the hiring and retaining of health care providers to fill the national void that is PRIMARY HEALTH CARE. Primary care is the foundation of medicine. With more primary providers and with longer hours, this increases accessability and allows providers and patients to tackle the negative health care trends that are devestating our country.
It is this lack of providers and accessability that leads to the need for specialty care. Of course there are exceptions. But largely specialty care is needed when accessability to primary care has failed or has reached its capacity for what it can do by definition. Finally, as I said earlier, the evaluation of establishing and maintaining of a true cooperative amongst the existing providers to provide after-hours care is simply a shameful deficiency that should not be overlooked any longer.