Save Charity Hospital and Lower Mid-City

Charity Hospital Supporters March on City Hall in New Orleans

Marchers arrive at City Hall with petitions supporting the re-opening of Charity Hospital.

Hundreds of New Orleanians marched Thursday from the shuttered Charity Hospital building to City Hall. The marchers, accompanied by brass bands, sought to deliver thousands of petitions to Mayor Mitch Landrieu urging him to re-open the landmark art deco hospital instead of destroying acres of historic housing in the Lower Mid-City neighborhood.

A copy of the petition remains available online for signature here. If you have already signed, please ask others to do so.

We will continue collecting both online and on the ground until we can not only give the petitions to the Mayor - but he also meets to discuss. While we were not able to present the petitions to the Mayor, we are in discussions with his staff about a meeting in the near future, and we anticipate presenting the petitions soon.

Additional links:

"Charity Hospital advocates hope for fresh start with seating of new board"

"Hospital plans defy the state's budget realities"

March and Petition Rally - Thursday, September 2, 2010

Join the Treme, Hot 8, Free Agents, Original Pinstripe, and Young Pinstripe Brass Bands for a march from the Rev. Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital to City Hall!

Help us deliver thousands of petitions to ask Mayor Landrieu for his support to build a 21st Century Hospital in the shell of the iconic Rev. Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, avoiding the destruction of an historic neighborhood.

The Mayor has said he has an open mind and will listen. Help us send the message: New Orleans supports the fiscally responsible and faster FHL/RMJM Hillier Architects Plan to reopen a state-of-the-art Reverend Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital!

Sign the petition to Mayor Landrieu online HERE.

March Details:

Thursday September 2, 2010

Formation: 4:45 PM

Kick Off: 5:00 PM

Location: 1532 Tulane Avenue

Hate to say it

But we told you so.

Did you happen to catch Bill Barrow's latest article in the Times-Picayune about the skyrocketing estimated costs that the proposed LSU Taj Mahospital will force taxpayers to foot each year?

The planned state teaching hospital in New Orleans will need at least $70 million in annual state general fund support through 2016 and could top $100 million in subsequent years, according to an analysis prepared for Louisiana Health Secretary Alan Levine.

That's a lot of money for operations and still doesn't address the $500 million shortfall preventing LSU from even beginning construction.

And that's also why we sought a compromise in which LSU and the VA would have swapped plots in Lower Mid-City. Not only would this have allowed the VA to begin construction on the best piece of land but it would have allowed the controversy around LSU's proposed hospital to be resolved without demolishing the most populous part of the Lower Mid-City community. Instead, it looks increasingly like the number one reason given for the entire LSU/VA complex - biomedical corridor synergy - is at risk. The residents of Lower Mid-City will have been kicked out of their houses for a VA hospital that, instead of being adjacent to a state-of-the-art teaching facility, will be completely isolated from the medical district for years.

If the politicians who have systematically enshrined the LSU/VA complex knew in 2006 or even in 2008 what we now know in 2010, would they have been so enthusiastic about skirting the hearing process?

If they knew that instead of a cost-efficient joint LSU/VA facility co-located on a site between Claiborne and Galvez, they'd get two totally separate sprawling hospitals on a larger site between Cliaborne and N. Rocheblave, would they have still supported the LSU/VA?

If they knew that healthcare reform would render LSU's financing plan inoperable?

If they knew how high site preparation costs would rise on New Orleans taxpayers?

If they knew home values would be artificially supressed to cheat Lower Mid-City residents out of just compensation?

If they knew that New Orleans would be without hospitals for nearly a decade after Katrina?

They should have known all these things because these are exactly the things that we have warned about. And to say nothing of the cheaper, faster, and less destructive plan we begged politicians to consider.

This latest disclosure about the operating costs that taxpayers will have to subsidize year after year must surely create some heartburn for Governor Bobby Jindal, who demanded strict fiscal restraint on all fronts. How will he justify such a large annual obligation? After all, the governor refused federal money to build high speed rail in Louisiana because it could have required $18 million in annual maintenance costs. The LSU/VA, which was chosen without consideration of alternatives, will cost taxpayers several times that each year.

So while LSU slowly reveals the true cost of their development and the amount of time during which state of the art medical care will continue to be denied, what are New Orleans state pols worried about?

Whether or not they'll have influence over board appointments.

Heaven forbid they show some compassion for Lower Mid-City residents being squeezed for every penny by appraisal and salvage contractors.

City lied about cost of demolishing Lower Mid-City

The Lens noticed a stunning admission from last week's City Council meeting:

A new financial commitment for the proposed medical district in Mid-City will leave a $25 million hole in a revolving loan fund given to the city from the state to jump start recovery.

The appropriation was described by one of Mayor Ray Nagin’s top lieutenants, Chief Technology Officer Harrison Boyd, during a City Council budget committee hearing Thursday. It took council members by surprise and raised questions about the decision to fund new hospitals for Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs with the $200 million revolver fund. That fund was created as a cushion to let the city start recovery projects without having to wait on FEMA payments.

--

Boyd said the Nagin administration chose to use the revolver “early on” knowing that the $25 million would not be reimbursed. He did not offer any clues on the logic behind the decision. He added that the decision was well within the rights of the city, even though the state made it clear that the $200 million revolver pot was meant to be steadily replenished by incoming FEMA payments so it would last until the city completed its more than 600 recovery projects

The $25 million comes on top of a previous appropriation of $75 million in disaster grants for the 70-acre hospital district.

When Boyd says that the revolver was chosen "early on," he wasn't lying. Apparently, way back in late 2007, the city and state got together and passed an amendment (see it or download it here) that Boyd says allows the city to tap the state revolver fund to pay for expenses related to the delivery of Lower Mid-City to the Department of Veterans Affairs. That means that way back in 2007, the city anticipated that the cost of acquiring and demolishing Lower Mid-City would exceed the $75 million in HUD DCDBG funds and $4 million in UDAG grants that have always been represented by officials as the entire cost of handing the VA a 'construction-ready' parcel.

During city budget hearings late last year, it became clear that the city was obligated to provide for site preparation costs related to the proposed LSU/VA that would exceed the amount that had already been appropriated in city disaster money for the project but city officials declined to enumerate the additional costs or own up to budget line items that appeared to obligate additional monies. Now, it seems that the city had always known that the site they offered to the VA would cost more to acquire and demolish than they had told the public, and perhaps, the VA itself.

With bulldozers looming over the lives of Lower Mid-City residents it is outrageous that the full cost of this project continues to be hidden from public view. At what point will our elected leaders realize that they have been conned into supporting a project that was not only inferior to proposed alternatives but far more deleterious to our ability to fund other crucial recovery and development projects throughout the city than anyone (except city officials, it appears) ever realized? At what point will our elected leaders realize that LSU is not currently capable of delivering on their half of the proposed hospital complex? At what point will our elected leaders stand up for Lower Mid-City residents and stand up against this boondoggle of a project?

On Thursday afternoon, City Council will decide whether or not it is time to arrange for the closure of streets in Lower Mid-City. It represents the first time Council has ever had a public hearing on anything related to the LSU/VA. Perhaps they will use the opportunity to determine what the full cost of this project actually is. Or perhaps they will close their eyes and leap without caring whether they're on a curb or a cliff.

LSU scaling back?

Earlier this month, Governor Bobby Jindal announced his first appointments to the governing board of the proposed $1.2 billion LSU Hospital slated for Lower Mid-City. In two separate press accounts of his announcement, there seemed to be a slightly veiled indication that the financing for the proposed hospital was in trouble and plans might be scaled back.

Here, from WWLTV, is Jindal himself:

"We want to board to officially review the business plan, we want the board to make the decision on the revenue bonds that needs to be issued. The state is in for $300 million dollars, the federal government's now in for $475 million dollars. There will still be up to approximately $300 million up to $400 million, depending on the size and the scope of the actual hospital," Jindal said. "The board will have to get that through revenue bonds, so the board has to make sure they're fine with the business plans, and then they've got to be able to go to the market to get those revenue bonds sold."

And here, the Times-Picayune notes Tulane University President Scott Cowen's remarks:

Cowen said he is ready to make his nomination whenever the governor's office asks. Cowen was emphatic that the board should "the sooner, the better," take over planning decisions for the new hospital, including approving a business plan and presenting that to investors on the bond market to round out a construction budget. The state has $775 million on hand for what is projected to be a $1.2 billion, 424-bed complex.

Cowen said the board's role would extend to examining the size and scope of the hospital as well, suggesting he believes the board could deviate from the proposal now on the drawing board.

We've been saying that LSU is far from ready to move forward with their proposed medical complex for awhile.

State Treasurer John Kennedy has bluntly pointed out flaws in the business plan proposed for the complex on a consistant basis.

But this may be the first time we've seen proponents of the complex finally admit it that their plan is too expensive as conceived.

This is one of the main reasons we have consistently advocated for the FHL/RMJM Hillier plan that calls for a new hospital to be built using the facade of historic Charity Hospital.

That LSU is moving forward with the expropriation of property in a residential neighborhood on behalf of the VA while the land they've already earmarked for themselves sits still for untold months or years is tragic. LSU should go back into the historic medical district, the VA should get LSU's land near I-10 and Lower Mid-City should be allowed to rebuild just like every other New Orleans neighborhood.

Basically, Treasurer Kennedy has argued that:

1) LSU's model was built before the financial collapse in 2008 and its reliance on borrowing would not fly during the recession.

2. LSU's model was built before healthcare reform - and changes to federal reimbursements for hospitals - becamse likely.

LSU may only now be fully awake and cognizant that it must deal with both of those realities and the tea leaves above may soon be translated into plain English as state legislators return to session and start to wonder whatever came of the hospital for which they allocated $300 million way back in 2007.