Susan Barr
Kern Valley Sun

A special meeting of the new Kern Valley Healthcare District Board was held last Thursday in the hospital cafeteria. Several members of the community were present, despite the unusual meeting time of 3:00 p.m.

Although there were several items on the agenda, the main purpose of the meeting was to elect a new slate of officers. The only nomination offered was done so by board member Kay Knight. Her proposed slate consisted of a nomination of herself for Chair, Dr. Robert Gross for First Vice Chair, Bob Jamison for Second Vice Chair, Victoria Alwin for Secretary and Brad Armstrong for Treasurer. A motion was made and carried to accept the slate as proposed. At that point, Knight suggested that it might be in the best interest of the board to change the date and possibly the time of the regularly scheduled board meeting, which is currently held on the first Thursday of the month at 5:30 p.m. Knight’s suggestion was to hold the meetings on the second Tuesday of the month. No reason was given for proposing the change. After some discussion, it was agreed that further discussion regarding a date change would be shelved until the next meeting.

Next was a discussion about the architectural firm that was selected at last week’s board meeting. Rick Carter, Hospital CEO took the opportunity to clarify exactly what can be expected now that a decision has been made. NTD was selected as the firm that the District would enter into negotiations with once the project has been defined. The scope of the construction project will be determined by whether the hospital is given an SPC1 (Structural Performance Category) or SPC2 rating by OSHPD (Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development) which is a California State agency that has jurisdiction over hospitals and other state funded facilities. OSHPD is currently implementing a program to re-evaluate the seismic risk of hospital buildings classified as SPC-1. These buildings are considered hazardous and at risk of collapse in the event of an earthquake and must be retrofitted, replaced or removed from providing acute care services by 2013. OSHPD is using HAZARDS U.S. (HAZUS), a state-of-the-art methodology, to reassess the seismic risk of SPC-1 buildings and those that are determined to pose a low seismic risk may be reclassified to SPC-2. The SPC-2 buildings would have until 2030 to comply with the structural seismic safety standards.

The remaining items on the agenda dealt with billing issues and payments to vendors.