We Have a BCHD Healthy Living campus

Beach Reporter, Easy Reader - 9/17/20

Recent reports from the Beach Cities Health District show that beach city residents are among the healthiest in the nation (BCHD Health Report 2018). Despite our robust good health, the BCHD board believes residents need an “intergenerational, vibrant campus where people can engage in healthy behaviors, form meaningful connections, and be well.” (BCHD website 2020). Why would we, who are among the healthiest in the nation, need to go to a BCHD campus to “be well?” Our community provides sufficient opportunities to maintain our healthy lifestyles and “meaningful relationships.” Quite simply, we don’t need a Healthy Living Campus. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on a campus we don’t need, the BCHD board must build upon what we already have in our community. When the Covid 19 vaccine is fully established, BCHD can facilitate partnerships between our cities and schools to provide recreation such as pool facilities for kids’ swim lessons, basketball and tennis courts for teens and adults, classroom space for senior art classes, all located on existing school sites. With city revenue losses causing departmental cutbacks, now is the time for BCHD to support our communities by adding value to what we already have, not building a campus we don’t need. —Sheila Lamb, Redondo Beach See link to article to comment online. https://tbrnews.com/.../article_364d13f2-f52b-11ea-916d...

Shared values

Easy Reader - 9/10/20

Dear ER:

Should Redondo Beach and Torrance neighborhoods be at the mercy of a multinational company that is a partner in an oil refinery in the Bakken “Fracking and Tar Sands” crude oil fields in North Dakota? Beach Cities Health District selected the company Wood PLC to complete the environmental impacts analysis for BCHDs proposed 705,000 sqft, 75-foot tall campus over-development project. Wood PLC is responsible for assessing how much damage BCHDs construction and ongoing operations will do to the surrounding neighborhoods with traffic, noise, air pollution, asbestos, chronic stress, etc. Wood PLC is a partner in Meridian’s Davis refinery, touted to be the first greenfield refinery built in the U.S. since 1976. It’s up in the Bakken Fracking and Tar Sands fields where oil is shipped down the Dakota Access Pipeline, through the ancestral Sioux Nation, and under a fresh water reservoir that’s 3-times the size of Lake Tahoe. Davis refinery will be adjacent to, and visible from, Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Wood PLC does not share our values as a community.  BCHD apparently no longer shares our community values either.

Mark Nelson

Redondo Beach

A healthy vote

Easy Reader, 8/18/20

Dear Editor,

After reading Mark Nelson’s  “Sandbox” column about the latest shenanigans of the Beach Cities Wealth, ahem, I meant Health, District (Sandbox: A tale of two classes, ER July 23, 2020), I find it necessary to rouse myself from my comfy lockdown stupor to write in support of his comments. This is a fine bit of writing, succinct, clear and logical, and free from hyperbole. I encourage anyone who wonders why people are up in arms about the construction project on the old South Bay Hospital site to search out his letter. Another excellent commentary on the project may be found in former Redondo Beach City Council member Bob Pinzler’s column On Local Government (ER July 2, 2020). Personally, I have wondered for years why BCHD continues to exist when the purpose for their existence, a community hospital, no longer exists. After learning that their top 10 employee salaries account for about 50 percent of the  tax revenues they receive (from property owners in the beach cities), I wonder if their primary focus is less on community health and more on self perpetuation. Their strongest suit may be tooting their own horn.  Look at their website if you don’t believe me. We elect the BCHD board members, and an election is pending. This time around, let’s consider electing a few people who are willing to take an honest look the least expensive ways of using our hard earned tax revenues to support worthy local programs, like paramedic services; up to and including dissolving the BCHD.

(Do we really need to pay 10 people an average of $190,000 per year each to tell us which restaurants are “Blue Zone”?)

Mary Watkins

Redondo Beach