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

[Mike Lehman]

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