Chop off their heads

Dear ER:

The $30 million bond Beach Cities Health District (BCHD) is asking you to vote on in November isn’t necessary. Even though BCHD “pleads poverty” they receive steady tax dollars; about $5 million per year. Now, without even asking you, BCHD is working to serve outside district residents. BCHD will begin servicing outside cities, which is in direct conflict to guidelines the voters voted for. Can I underscore that the beach cities residents are footing the bill for allcove services for cities like Lawndale, Hawthorne and Long Beach (which has its own Health Department).  This is on the heels of the $1.7 million bike path to nowhere. BCHD’s poor, reckless, fiscal choices put taxpayers on the hook for services that do not benefit Beach City residents and BCHD legally is not intended to serve. BCHD refuses to do what everyone else has had to do — cut expenses. They could easily reduce the [combined] $1.2 million annual earnings of their top five executives, and reduce their full time equivalent headcount of 80 people. 

What has BCHD done for you by their wasteful, reckless spending over the years?  BCHD wants to turn their financial responsibilities, as well as those commitments of a private party, into tax increases. These efforts are lock step with BCHD’s careless disregard for the public will. The need to dissolve BCHD’s board should be a priority of all of us. Just say no to another poorly planned bond for outside residents we get stuck paying for.  

Candace Allen Nafissi

Redondo Beach 

Seismic shift

https://easyreadernews.com/letters-opinion/

Dear ER:

The Beach Cities Health District seems to have gone seismic consultant shopping to find one who would “tell them” to demolish the former South Bay Hospital building. No luck though. The first consultant, Youssef Associates, provided the Community Working Group with a presentation stating that “best practice” would allow up to 25 years more use prior to retrofit or demolition.

They also noted that there were no requirements to upgrade the building to current code and that any work BCHD did, including demolition, was “voluntary.”

So BCHD went shopping for another consultant and somehow found ImageCat Inc. They provided BCHD with a maybe some owners would deem operation past 10 more years as unacceptable. Their exact language was “risk … from 10 to 50 years becomes significantly higher, with probabilities of collapse that would likely be deemed unacceptable.”

Likely? Why the weasel word? Likely by whom? ImageCat apparently didn’t have any hard data because there’s no requirement to demolish the building, nor to red tag it as unsafe. When an engineer says that a problem is likely, but not imminent, it’s just a cover your ass.

So no matter which BCHD consultant you choose to believe, BCHD’s demolition of the South Bay Hospital building is voluntary, not covered by any ordinance or code, and can wait for up to 25 years, according seismic “best practice.”

Taxpayers should not be paying $15M for guesses by BCHD executives with no seismic expertise or training.

Mark Nelson

Redondo Beach

Old 20% 80% split

Dear ER

Only 5% to 20% of BCHD’s Healthy Living Campus services are targeted at District residents. The other 80% to 95% services are designed for non-residents from outside the District, outside the County, and outside the State. Yet BCHD believes district residents should pay all the bills, provide all the land, and suffer all the environmental damages of a high density, non-resident development. BCHD is pushing its bond measure and a change in the City of Redondo Beach’s proposed General Plan. Both the bond and their desired high density development are primarily for the benefit of non-taxpayers of the District (Hermosa, Redondo, Manhattan Beach). 

$10 million of the bond is for allcove, an LA County SPA8 program that spans from Long Beach to Catalina Island to LAX. Of that 1.4 million population, 91% are non-residents of the District and pay no taxes to support BCHD. 

The other $20 million of the bond is to prepare the site for the private developer who will own and operate 100% of the assisted living facility. That facility will have 80% non-resident tenants according to BCHD’s consultant’s zip code level assessment. Why is BCHD taking $20 million of taxpayer funds to subsidize a private developer?

Mark Nelson

Redondo Beach