What our Health Care District has accomplished

Published 1:30 am Thursday, January 4, 2024

On December 20, I participated in my last meeting as a commissioner of the Vashon Health Care District. My term ended on New Year’s Eve.

It’s been a busy, gratifying, sometimes trying four years.

I was one of the five original commissioners elected in November 2019, the same election in which Vashon voted overwhelmingly to establish the district. You chose to tax yourselves to maintain, and hopefully improve, health care on the island. You entrusted my colleagues and me to make that happen.

We started with no staff, no money, not even a place to meet. The years that followed have been a roller coaster of challenges, crises and achievements we never could have foreseen when we were sworn in.

Since 2019 I’ve talked with hundreds of islanders about access to health care – or lack of it – and how it affects their lives. I’ve learned much about the mind-boggling complexities of the broken American health care system, and how they hinder efforts to improve care in a small, isolated community like Vashon.

My fellow commissioners and I haven’t always agreed on how to carry out our mission. On a couple occasions a majority of the board zigged when I wanted to zag.

But, despite occasional disagreements, we’ve worked together well. As I look back on the past four years, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.

We saved the island’s primary care clinic.

Weeks after we took office, financially troubled Neighborcare Health, which then operated the Sunrise Ridge clinic, told us it intended to leave Vashon. We embarked on a search for a new provider just as the chaos of COVID-19 was erupting. It began to look like the clinic might close.

At the last minute, Sea Mar Community Health Centers offered to take over the clinic – but only if the district subsidized them to the tune of $125,000 a month. With no alternative, we swallowed hard and signed the deal.

For the past year Sea Mar has run the clinic with no contract with, or subsidy from, the district. That’s at least partly because they’ve found a way to tap a federal subsidy program that Neighborcare and other previous operators didn’t utilize.

But Sea Mar wouldn’t have come to Vashon, and almost certainly wouldn’t be here now, if the district hadn’t recruited them back in 2020.

We’re debt-free.

Because of the timing of the vote that established the district, we couldn’t collect property taxes for more than a year. We still had bills to pay, most notably monthly subsidies for Neighborcare, then Sea Mar.

So we arranged a line of credit with King County. At its peak – or depth – our debt topped $1.1 million.

Last April we paid it off in full, 3-1/2 years ahead of schedule. That’s allowed us to at last begin accumulating a reserve.

We acquired a valuable asset.

In 2022 the district bought a 2.3-acre property for a below-market price from a community-minded islander. It fronts Vashon Highway just south of Kathy’s Corner.

Our original plan to partner with Sea Mar to build a new clinic there to replace the aging, out-of-the-way Sunrise Ridge facility didn’t pan out. Nonetheless, the district still envisions using the site at some point to address Vashon’s health-care needs.

We own the property free and clear – no debt.

Our property-tax levy hasn’t increased in three years.

In 2021, the first year we could collect property taxes, we adopted an annual levy of about $1.95 million. Three years later, in 2024, it’s still $1.95 million.

That makes the Health Care District truly unique: The levy of every other local government entity to which you pay property taxes has increased over those years, in some cases by a lot.

Legally, the district could collect much more. We’re sensitive to the hardship rising property taxes imposes on some of our neighbors.

We run a lean operation, with just two part-time employees. Commissioners do much of the work that’s delegated to staff in other organizations. They’re volunteers; all of them have waived the stipends to which they are legally entitled.

We’re moving to address two of the island’s biggest unmet health care needs.

The district’s top priorities for 2024 are to bring urgent care to Vashon, and to beef up behavioral health services and outcomes, especially for children.

You identified these as pressing concerns during community listening sessions we conducted in early 2023. Now the district is talking with potential partners, on island and off, to turn these priorities into programs. My only regret is that those programs couldn’t have been established before my term ended.

I leave office confident the district is on the right course. Thank you for your support over the past four years. It’s been a privilege to serve.

Eric Pryne is a retired Seattle Times journalist and former commissioner of the Vashon Health Care District.