Problematic Hospital District Board

Regular readers will have noticed my return to the problematic topic that is the Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD) in this new year of 2022. Prior to that I hadn't put finger to keyboard on the subject since September 2020. Not only did I stop writing about MCHCD in September 2020, beginning with November of that year I ceased zooming or calling into any meetings associated with MCHCD until August 2021. The reasons are personal and involve more people than myself. 

On August 9^th last year, a few minutes before four in the afternoon, I received a phone call from a member of the MCHCD Board. That director was concerned that the public was being left out of meetings. The board member worried no one from the public had realistically been notified of that evening's meeting and the serious issues on the agenda.

Just before 5 p.m., I successfully maneuvered my desktop here at the ranch through the zoom link the phone caller had provided and there I was with five MCHCD board members. No one else from the public showed. Roll was taken then MCHCD Board chair Jessica Grinberg called for public comment. I spoke to what I had found out, or rather what I could not find out, in the intervening hour. Nowhere on the internet could one find a reference to the meeting. The district's old website (mcdh.org) had seemingly been dormant for a month, the district's Facebook page hadn't been employed since the second week in January. A newer website (mchcd.org) displayed agendas from the first couple of months of 2021, but nothing more recently. I explained this to the board and that physically posting the meeting agenda just inside the hospital's entry door did not pass muster during Covid times when all but patients themselves were being asked to stay away from the hospital. At one point board chair Grinberg inquired of another member, “John, did you post the agenda?” (meaning on a website).

John replied, “I was locked out.” This was John Redding, the board member delegated the previous autumn to spearhead an ad hoc committee to achieve website independence from the old hospital web page (mcdh.org). To his credit, by January 2021 he got the aforementioned mchcd.org up and running. It produced the agendas for January and February and possibly March 2021 then ceased to exist until August 23, 2021.

Board chair Grinberg rightfully called off that August 9^th meeting because of the lack of notice to the public. However, about ten days later I discovered that the MCHCD Board held a meeting on August 12^th; same agenda, a handful of invited guests, and that's it. As if no lesson whatsoever was learned on August 9^th. No posts existed referencing the meeting in any media outlet, including nothing on the internet. All the more jaw dropping, the meeting was held, a closed session matter discussed, and three open session agenda items at least partially addressed, one with action (the potential hiring of district legal counsel), but here's the best part: one of the agenda items involved having officials from Fort Bragg city government present. Astoundingly, no one bothered to inform the City that said August 12^th meeting was taking place!

When I belatedly heard about this mystery meeting, I wrote a lengthy text to the board chair. In the text I began by saying I would offer up some possible solutions to the board's lack of communication with the public, but there would also be some harsh criticism as well. At one juncture in the text, I suggested that due to the lack of realistic communication to the public, everything on that August 12^th agenda needed to be reconsidered in the board's next regular meeting. 

Well, lo and behold, the full agenda from the mystery meeting appeared on the mchcd.org website on time and in it, all the agenda items from August 12^th were up for reconsideration. In the course of the August 26th meeting, with substantial attendance, the decision about legal counsel was reversed and a further agenda item about methods to rectify the lack of communication also received discussion, with many promises to do better.

First, kudos to the MCHCD Board and then chair Grinberg for putting the August 12^th agenda up for a more realistic reconsideration at the end of the month meeting. Eventually, the MCHCD Facebook page was reactivated. Notices of upcoming meetings now appear on the district website, some Facebook pages, and board member Norman deVall has fulfilled his promise to get notices out on the mcn listserv.

In other ways, however, the MCHCD Board hasn't yet been able to live completely up to the promise of that August 26, 2021 meeting. The MCHCD Facebook page posted links to their December board meetings, but failed to continue to do so in January 2022. The board apparently ignored offered assistance for tech issues. In October, John Redding did create an entirely new district website with the elongated title, mchcdorg.com. That was a positive on the surface. The  problem there is that Redding alone controls it and at times posts what he wants without approval of the full board. He “grants permission” (his words) to other board members to use it occasionally. 

There are good people on this board. The problems started for them when Adventist Health took over day to day operations of the coast hospital on July 1, 2020. The healthcare district board left themselves with no support staff. By mid-August one board member told me, “I'm burnt out,” from working a regular job all week plus trying to keep a handle on the daily goings on of the district. 

That lack of support staff has burdened the MCHCD board ever since the summer of 2020. They had some sort of administrative assistant for three or four weeks in October of that year, but she resigned in the first days of November 2020. At the December 2020 board elections, Redding sulked after losing the election for board chair. In the next few minutes he refused nomination as Board Secretary and Board Treasurer. Board chair Grinberg was stuck performing the additional duties of Secretary until the end of March 2021 when Redding apparently got over his defeat in December enough to return to his duties as Treasurer. During that double duty time between December 2020 and March 2021, Grinberg did complete minutes for each month's regular board meetings. One caveat: there were at least two special board meetings during that time frame that have no minutes.

Minutes or recordings of meetings are the backbone of special districts like MCHCD. They provide a placeholder where the public can see what items and issues have been approved or rejected by the board of directors. Essentially, without minutes or a complete recording of a board meeting it's as if the meeting never took place. The MCHCD Board still has not completed minutes and/or produced zoom recordings for a dozen or more meetings between September 2020 and the present day. A couple of those sets of minutes were pulled from the next month's agenda then never re-addressed, most have never been produced. 

 A step in the right direction occurred around this new year, a handful of zoom recordings were posted for public perusal. On the district's website, two of those zoom recordings have the wrong date attached to them. It is likely not Redding's fault, they probably came to him mislabeled. One of those two is not a board meeting but a recording of a phone conversation from late February 2021 involving two board members, a consultant to the board, and an insurance representative. It is a mildly entertaining twenty minute listen if one is into the finer details of “tail” coverage in an  insurance policy. The board members (Jessica Grinberg and Amy McColley) demonstrate a thoroughness in their questioning of the insurance rep.

From November 2020 through to early April 2021, it appears that the MCHCD Board was again without any support staff. They had a seemingly well-liked office manager from April through June 2021, but she left to pursue other opportunities, perhaps the only one of their support staff to leave on positive terms with all five board members. 

The MCHCD Board apparently hired a bookkeeping service in July 2021, though only sketchy records exist to verify the hiring. We can delve into that at another time. The sketchiness involves John Redding.

The MCHCD Board held its regular January 2022 meeting on the 27^th. On the positive side, action items were successfully accomplished. Redding returned to the Treasurer role after his usual pout and sulk at the December 2021 board elections (see last week's report). On the other hand, in front of an audience of forty-forty-five members of the public, two MCHCD Board members spoke out strongly against Redding. One likened his behavior within the board to a bully. 

It is possible that a vote of censure may arise at a special meeting on February 2^nd. We shall see. In January 2017 the district board censured one of its members, by a 4-1 vote, for sending out a closed session email involving a legal case to the general public email list rather than to board members only. Again, see last week's article for some reasons board members might consider a censure vote against John Redding. 

A censure won't change the big picture realities of MCHCD. It is merely a formalized slap on the wrist. Over the remainder of 2022, this five member board faces some potentially momentous decisions about what the future of healthcare will look like on the Mendocino Coast. A good deal of those decisions about a seismic retrofit of the hospital or building a new facility, and how big or small it should be at inception, will depend on positions that Adventist Health takes in the coming months.