County to Vote on Loan for Medical Center

Two years after county voters spurned a $51-million renovation and expansion plan for the Ventura County Medical Center, the county Board of Supervisors is set to vote today on a proposal to borrow $7.2 million to upgrade the aging hospital’s utility system.

The project would include installing new electric, water, steam and sewer lines, and storm drains. The money also would be used to replace and relocate the emergency generator currently located in a neighborhood next to the hospital campus at 3291 Loma Vista Road.

The 75-year-old hospital’s utility system has not had a major overhaul since it was installed in the early 1920s, officials said.

“It’s certainly urgent,” said Arthur Goulet, director of the county’s Public Works Agency. “We do have failures from time to time. When the steam system goes down, the hospital can’t do a lot of things it needs to do, like sterilization and laundry. When the electrical system goes down, there are portions of the campus in noncritical care that do not have backup power.”

In addition, neighbors complain of noise and air pollution caused by the off-campus motorized generator when it kicks in after an electrical failure, Goulet said.

A new generator would be located somewhere in the middle of the hospital campus, away from homes, he said.

County Auditor-Controller Thomas Mahon said the county is banking on receiving state reimbursement for more than half the cost of the project. The remainder would come from hospital revenues, he said.

In 1996, the county proposed a $51-million upgrading plan that included adding a five-story building and a parking lot to the campus, but Community Memorial Hospital objected. Officials at the private, nonprofit hospital near the medical center successfully challenged the plan, calling it an unfair, taxpayer-backed bid for private patients.

Community Memorial launched a $1.5-million campaign, through a referendum known as Measure X, to block the project, and won by a nearly 2-1 margin.

But on Monday, Doug Dowie, a Community Memorial spokesman, said the hospital is not opposed to county medical center’s new plan.

“We have no objection to the medical center upgrading its power source,” Dowie said. “We’re not going to take any action to block the $7 million. You need to have sewers and electricity and water; that’s about patient safety.

By contrast, “The $51-million project we thought was excessive,” he said. “That was clearly different. That was to be used to improve and modernize and build a parking structure.”

Dowie said Community Memorial Hospital officials today will urge supervisors to conduct a study on the need for earthquake retrofitting at countywide hospitals.

A state law was passed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake mandating that hospitals be earthquake-safe by the beginning of 2000, he said.

“They should analyze what they need to do since the law was passed after the Northridge earthquake,” Dowie said. “There should be an analysis done to make sure the entire region fulfills the requirements.”