OROVILLE FALLS TO REARDAN
OROVILLE WINTER MARKET
IN STATE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF
Saturday, May 23, 10 a.m. Oroville Library Community Room
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MISSOULA CHILDREN’S THEATER VISITS OROVILLE
Group demands Enloe Dam breach
PUD ratepayers could be stuck with the bill BY GARY A. DEVON MANAGING EDITOR
OROVILLE – While the Okanogan County PUD would like to generate power at Enloe Dam a group of opponents wants to breach the historic dam. The question is who would bear cost of a breach which could top $100 million. Rick and Jeré Gillespie’s opposition to relicensing Enloe, which is located near Oroville on the Similkameen River, stretches back a quarter century. They were instrumental in placing a poll in a mid-county newspaper asking people to vote on whether the PUD should continue their efforts to bring power generation back to the dam after more than 60 years, or whether the dam should be pulled out. Both could be pricey propositions, especially the clean-up of silt that has gathered behind the dam for most of the last century. However it looks like the option of the PUD just walking away and doing nothing has been taken off the table as federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and others have requested the dam be removed if it is no longer used for power generation. The question is who will pay for the removal and clean-up. Via the Facebook page “Friends of the Similkameen,” the Gillespies are urging people to vote
Alice in Wonderland was the theme of this year’s presentation by the Missoula Children’s Theatre at Oroville last Saturday at Coulton Auditorium. The cast was made up of students from Oroville and included three Alices as she grew -- small, middle and tall -- Kylie Acord, Hadley Blasey and Sheridan Blasey, respectively. The play included many of the familiar characters, including the caterpillar with segments played by six children, as well as March Hare (above), Humpty Dumpty (right), Queen of Hearts (below right), Alice (below) and the Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
BY BRENT BAKER
BBAKER@GAZETTE-TRIBUNE.COM
TONASKET - Discussion about the future of the Tonasket Municipal Swimming pool continued at the Tuesday, Nov. 12, city council meeting after the council had had a chance to review a book-length report completed by Pool World of Spokane at its behest. With four options for an outdoor pool costing anywhere from $1.5 million to $2.5 million the council intends to host a town hall meeting (date still to be determined) to invite the public to share its thoughts and try to gauge how much material support there will be for the project. “We’d have all four alternatives posted,” said city planner Kurt Danison of Highlands Associates. “We’ll post the
Preliminary NVH budget approved BY BRENT BAKER BBAKER@GAZETTE-TRIBUNE.COM
TONASKET - The North Valley Hospital Board of Commissioners, with a healthy crowd in attendance, approved its 2014 preliminary budget at its Thursday, Nov. 14, meeting. As discussed at the Oct. 31 meeting, Chief Financial Officer Helen Verhasselt presented a budget designed to stem consistent financial losses in the districts Long Term Care divi-
SEE DAM | PG A4
Pool, infrastructure dominate council talk
Steffi Fuchs/submitted photos
CEO answers recent criticism of hospital district
for “Breach the dam and end debate.” They claim that the BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Bonneville Power Administration will foot the bill for removal and clean up of sediment and that ratepayers would only be responsible of the PUD continues to pursue power generation. John Grubich, general manager of Okanogan County PUD isn’t so sure. “The opponents of the dam have made those assertions several times. However, we have been unable to get any federal agency (BLM, BPA, USF&W etc.) to indicate that they would pay for the cost of removal,” Grubich said. “Jeré has stated in our public meetings that Congress has allocated funds for dam removal about three decades ago and is certain those funds are still available. I have not been able to run that to ground either.” The PUD Manager agrees that someone will have to pay for removal and if it isn’t the federal government it will be Okanogan County PUD ratepayers. “The dam is physically located on BLM property and they have indicated that if we do not pursue power generation they want it removed. While they are soft pedaling that now a year and a half ago they were pretty insistent,” said Grubich, who adds the cost would be a
sion. NVH will, over time and as beds become available, trim the Extended Care facility’s number of beds from its current level of 58 down to 40, including 33 paid for by Medicaid, three through Medicare and four by private insurance. “This is something we will be working toward,” Verhasselt said. “A target to try to attain.” The rationale for those changes includes reducing the ratio of Medicaid patients to privately insured, since Medicaid reimbursements (locked in at the same rate since 2007) do not fully cover the cost of care, and to increase utilization of the hospital’s swing beds. “For the exact same care we give a Medicare resident on the
Extended Care side, as opposed to a swing bed patient on the hospital side, the reimbursement is much higher for the district as a whole,” Verhasselt said. “So we want to try to market the swing bed program going more and take care of as many patients there to help the district’s financial position overall.” The budget operates with a number of assumptions, including (but not limited to) patient volumes staying at approximately the same level, a five percent increase in hospital (though not Extended Care) room rates, a two percent step increase in wages and benefits, and an eight percent increase in employee insurance costs. Verhasselt said that changing
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the way services purchased by the Long Term Care division from the hospital are allocated will help the overall bottom line. “I’ve been talking to our cost report preparers and auditors,” she said. “I have gotten the OK to move forward with changing our allocation method. It still needs to be approved by Medicare. That will decrease some of the expense on the Extended Care side and that is taken into consideration here as well.” The bottom line, Verhasselt said, is to continue to make progress on the hospital’s warrants while making it profitable enough to be on the razor’s edge of losing money. In the current year, the district is projected to finish with a total loss of about $86,000. The hospital division stands to land more than $859,000 in the black, with Long Term Care losing $945,000. The 2014 budget includes a $179,000 loss in Long Term Care and a $546,000 profit for the hospital, for a district-wide net income of about $368,000. “This is what we’re going to
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budget for each one, and I’ll spend time going through each one ... We’ll have time to answer some questions ... Then we basically would get colored dots and let people vote. “We’ll get some kind of idea of what people want,” he added, saying such a vote would be considered an expression of public opinion as opposed to committing the city to a particular course of action. “We’ll see what level of support the community wants to show. The council needs to make a decision on the direction we’re going to go, or more importantly, if we’re even going to go at all.” Still to be determined is whether or not the city is willing or able to pursue the project itself, or whether a recreation district for the pool would need to be
SEE TONASKET | PG A3
work toward,” Verhasselt said in response to a question by Don Atchison. “If there is something that happens in the middle of the year or a few months down the road, if something changes in our circumstances ... (for example) if the state changed the rates for Medicaid on the Extended Care side, we would re-look at the whole thing and potentially submit a revised budget.”
ACCUSATIONS ADDRESSED NVH Administrator Linda Michel defended the hospital against accusations that were made in local media outlets in recent weeks, including a radio broadcast and a letter in the Gazette-Tribune. She took issue with a number of points made during a radio discussion, including: • That the hospital is not respectful of its history. “ We certainly are,” Michel said. “We talk about our history all the time ... if you walk through our facility you see many historic items and pictures...” • That the senior leadership
and board had gotten stagnant. “This board and this leadership team are not stagnant,” Michel said. “They are constantly working on things ... to improve the district to keep it viable for years to come. Every employee is engaged in that, too.” • That the hospital is inconsiderate of its customers’ needs and experiences, including in the emergency room. “We get a lot of thank you,” she said. “Our Coast to Coast physicians (in the ER) are emergency certified. I can’t tell you how many lives they’ve saved this year... We do phenomenal work in our ER. I am very committed to having them here because they bring another level of service to our community that they don’t have elsewhere.” • That the board and administration were not transparent. “We have tried so hard this past year to get to the community the information they want,” Michel said. “We’ve published a newsletter, we’ve had more verbal
SEE HOSPITAL | PG A4
INSIDE THIS EDITION Valley Life A2 Letters/Opinion A5 Community A6-7
Classifieds/Legals A8-9 Real Estate A9 Cops & Courts A10
Sports Obituaries
A11 A12