SUTTER EXPANSION PLAN FUELS CONTROVERSY
At the June HANC general membership meeting a presentation was made by two panelists from San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing Jobs and Justice (SFHHJJ) , a coalition of some 60 community, neighborhood and labor organizations seeking amendments to the draft Development Agreement for the proposed Sutter/CPMC 550 bed hospital at Cathedral Hill at Geary and Van Ness. Little did HANC members know that within two weeks of the presentation dramatic chinches would occur in the project calling its final approval into question.
Bob Prentice, former Assistant Director of the Department of Public Health and Paul Kumar, former Political Director of SEIU, Local 250 presented SFHHJJ proposals for improving access to health care at the new facility, improving Sutter’s poor record of providing “charity care” for the medical indigent and assuring the continued operation as a full service hospital of St. Luke’s hospital, acquired by Sutter in 2004. Both speakers made the case that this huge expansion of Sutter in San Francisco would give it “market control” of heath care which demands that the City, as a condition of approval of the project, make sure that it not result in lower health care services and higher health care cost.
Two major concerns were discussed: the impact on City health care costs for its workers and “Healthy San Francisco” given Sutter’s market dominance and the requirement that Sutter maintain St. Luke’s for a minimum of twenty years as a full service hospital in the medically underserved southeast portion of the City. The fact that the first issue has yet to be resolved has meant that none of the Boards conservative members have stepped forward to endorse the project.
But it was the St. Luke’s issue that now threatens the approval of the project.
At a hearing before a Board Committee on June 25th, a representative of the Mayor reported that the “deal” reached with Sutter regarding an “escape clause” which if met would allow Sutter to get out of operating St. Luke’s and originally thought to be based upon a remote set of conditions in fact, was not at all that remote and, indeed, was close to being met even before the project was approved allowing Sutter to end its operation of St. Luke’s within as few as five years, far short of the twenty year requirement in the draft agreement.
The announcement was greeted by stunned anger by the Board of Supervisors for having this significant fact held from them nearly two weeks. Not one Supervisor had co-sponsored the Mayors draft deal and with this announcement some Supervisors have called for the entire project to be sent back to “the drawing boards” and fundamentally re-negotiation.
The Stanyan and Page intersection traffic lights were turned on in May, 2012, only six years after HANC and nearby residents petitioned the City to install them. Heavily used by pedestrians both ways , the intersection was a “speedway” between the Haight Street traffic lights and the Fell street lights, creating real life dangers for all. Making material improvements to our neighborhood takes time and persistence, 
which is why neighborhood organizations like HANC are critically important. Individual residents may know the problems but it takes a neighborhood organization to change them.
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