ARLINGTON – Cascade Valley Hospital needs to catch up with 20 years of growth, district officials say.
That’s why voters are being asked to approve a bond issue for $42.5 million of hospital improvements, the biggest upgrade to its facilities in two decades. The proposed changes include enlarging its emergency room to more than twice its current size.
Ballots have been mailed to the more than 16,000 voters in the hospital’s taxing district. Residents can turn the ballots in to community centers starting today. They must be mailed no later than Tuesday. The issue must be approved by at least a 60 percent margin.
Ron Carlson, 75, who has lived in the Arlington area for 37 years, insists he’s not against the hospital’s expansion but won’t vote for it, either. The issue is one of fairness, he said.
“I’m going to take a lot of heat for this,” Carlson said. “For me to oppose this is like going against motherhood, apple pie and Chevrolet.”
But it’s not for the usual pocketbook reasons. Carlson said he supports the hospital’s proposed expansion project. But why, he wonders, does he, living in Bryant, have to pay the extra taxes the bond issue would impose when comparatively tax-rich Smokey Point businesses and homeowners don’t?
“This is not a one-year deal,” Carlson said. “This is a 25-year bond. That’s a lot of money. They’re willing to give those people a free ride.”
Bond issue backers say the expansion at Cascade Valley Hospital, in Arlington, is needed to keep up with the rising demand for medical care, including a near doubling in the number of emergency room patients over the past 10 years. On average it now treats 1,800 people a month.
During the peak winter months, the hospital has been unable to admit additional patients about 9 percent of the time because of lack of beds, said Clark Jones, the hospital’s chief executive.
“This project needs to be accomplished,” Jones said. If voters turn down this request, the hospital’s elected commissioners would probably try again in the future, he said.
The extra tax would start out at about 81 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation. The owner of a $350,000 home would pay about $283 more a year.
The tax is expected to decline as the tax base grows, to perhaps 70 cents per $1,000 in assessed valuation within five years, Jones said.
As for the hospital taxing district’s boundaries, Jones said they were drawn in 1964 to include the communities of Silvana, Arlington and Darrington.
“Of course, anything outside those boundaries was very rural,” he said.
Since then, many of the surrounding areas have grown substantially. Many of those residents use Cascade Valley Hospital even though they don’t pay property taxes to support the hospital, he said.
Residents outside the current boundaries would have to approve being annexed into the hospital district.
“It’s a difficult thing to sell,” said Ray McClure, a longtime former hospital board member who is co-chairman of a volunteer committee supporting the bond issue.
The last time a public hospital in Snohomish County attempted to enlarge its taxing district was in 1998, when Stevens Hospital in Edmonds asked voters to approve the change. It was soundly defeated.
Cascade Hospital bond supporters have raised $63,000 in donations for 750 yard signs and information materials on the bond issue, McClure said.
Volunteers also have organized a phone bank and are attempting to call every household in the taxing district, he said.
“Everybody’s been working hard,” McClure said. “I’m very confident it will pass.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
