[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] minutes of weekly AWARE meeting 2008-05-11

[Morton K. Brussel]

Thanks, Mike, for your very useful comments.  --Mort


On May 12, 2008, at 10:01 AM, Mike Lehman wrote:

> A suggestion, a disclaimer, and a clarification:
>
> Randall Cotton wrote:
>> Minutes of 5/11/08 AWARE meeting are below, but first, the Upcoming
>> Events Calendar:
>>
> SNIP
>> Farmer's Market:
>> Sign up grid passed around again for volunteers. Concern expressed
>> regarding lack of shade w/no canopy or umbrella. Umbrella is  
>> available at
>> Kruses (2007 S. George Huff Dr.), but the base is heavy and the  
>> umbrella
>> bulky. Still playing this by ear. Stuart did see a compact canopy  
>> tent at
>> Sierra Club booth.
>>
>>
> WRFU is having a booth at the Farmer's Market on some, but not all  
> Saturdays. They have a 10x10 canopy that they'd probably be willing  
> to share. Contact rfu at lists.ucimc.org if you'd like to try  
> coordinating.
>> Nursing home issue at Champaign County Board (operating at ongoing  
>> deficit
>> for a variety of reasons, significantly a recent substantial  
>> decrease in
>> Medicaid reimbursement levels). Talk of increasing property tax  
>> levy, but
>> there is disagreement. Some are talking openly of selling/ 
>> privatizing the
>> Nursing home. Urgency of the issue is ramping up.
> Disclaimer: I am the Green Party candidate in District 9 and was at  
> the CB meeting during this discussion the other night. So some of  
> this is my opinion, but it relies heavily on the facts.
>
> While the spin in the News-Gazette remains similar to what they've  
> promoted for years (Tom Kacich was in attendance and knows these  
> facts, but conveniently glossed over them in the editorial in  
> Sunday's paper), i.e. CCNH should be sold or leased out, in reality  
> Asst. State's Attorney Susan McGrath laid out scenarios that make  
> either of those possibilities difficult or impossible.
>
> A sale is a virtual impossibility, politically at least. This  
> option would require a two-third's majority vote by the CB itself  
> -- not likely given that even a few Republicans seem to still  
> support ownership as being in their own political interest and most  
> Democrats do -- then such a proposal would need to win a referendum  
> in order to close that would be placed before the voters. Given  
> that Champaign County voters voted 70% in favor of taxing  
> themselves to support CCNH in 2002, that's unlikely. The catch then  
> was that the Beckettcrats, with Republican support, reduced the tax  
> rate for that 2002 referendum to less than what it would take to  
> sustain CCNH, i.e. 3 cents per hundred. Now they need to go back to  
> the voters to pass another referendum to raise the rate to what  
> they should have done in 2002. But political realities mean that a  
> sale is a virtual impossibility. There is no way that a two-thirds  
> majority of the CB can be put together nor is the public likely to  
> approve such a notion, given that many county residents have paid  
> their taxes for years to support CCNH and are unlikely to give it  
> away just when they may need it themselves.
>
> A lease to a management firm for them to run is less difficult, but  
> similarly problematic. Unless they break the union or force  
> unreasonable concessions through -- like abandoning the Living Wage  
> -- there is little possibility that such an arrangement will work,  
> either. Part of the issue with higher costs is that the CB shifted  
> all retirement funding for CCNH people onto the nursing home itself  
> after the Living Wage passed, rather than spreading this cost over  
> the county's wider tax base, like sheriff's deputies, road workers,  
> county administrators, etc like it had been before. This imposition  
> of uniquely higher costs on CCNH seems to have been intended as a  
> poison pill, once again due to the Beckettcrats. What if the  
> sheriff had to pay his retirement costs solely out of the quarter  
> cent sales tax devoted to the county justice (sic) system? They'd  
> be in trouble, too.
>
> The reality is that the County Board needs to step up to the plate  
> and treat CCNH like the essential service it is. They need to put a  
> referendum on the ballot to raise support for CCNH to the level it  
> should have been in the first place, i.e. somewhare close to 10  
> cents/hundred, instead of the 3 cents/hundred passed in 2002. Sale  
> or lease is a political non-starter and hocus-pocus, despite what  
> the News-Gazette and certain politicians would have you believe.
> Mike Lehman
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