Sounding Off:

Editor’s note: Following is Paul Freeman’s comments to the Laguna City Council on Dec. 2.

?

Mayor Boyd, council members, my name is Paul Freeman, a property owner on Shady Lane. I’m here to lend my voice to concerns, reported in local newspapers, about the disposition of assets owned by the recently dissolved local hospital foundation.

Let me say at the outset I share such concerns. Some background: Firstly, I am here to speak strictly for myself. I’ve not shared with anyone what I was planning to say. Secondly, the community owes Elizabeth Pearson a big “thank you.” Were it not for her, it is highly probable that the hospital’s land would have been sold to a for-profit developer with no bidding process, no city involvement, no guarantee of a long-term hospital lease. Thanks are also due to this City Council and the state attorney general’s office for their effective intervention, the upshot of which was a far more constructive outcome than otherwise could have been reasonably expected.

My final background comment is to emphasize this last point. Laguna Beach and the other cities served by the hospital are fortunate that the St. Joseph system has stepped up. They have the financial capacity and management know-how to reposition a tired institution for long-term success. One look at the Mission campus, at its emergency room and facilities developed in partnership with Children’s Hospital, for example, leaves no doubt.

Whatever painful, even contentious issues emerge, then, are nice problems in comparison with the alternative of losing the hospital altogether, or having the land under that hospital acquired for speculative purposes, a recipe for disaster.