Letter to the Editor
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San Francisco Examiner
October 30, 2008
Note: Text set in red below is material initially submitted in this Letter to the Editor, but which the SF Bay Times chopped and didn’t publish.
Hospital Rebuild
Untimely
by Patrick Monette-Shaw
Ken Garcia’s voter guide (“A little help slogging through The City’s propositions," Oct. 24), once again misrepresents facts.
Opponents of Proposition A to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital include neighborhood leader George Wooding, Vice President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council, and good-government advocate Mara Kopp - not just me. Garcia should have known this by reading San Francisco’s voter guide.
For starters, while The City is projecting earning, at minimum, $542.6 million in tobacco settlement revenues during the life of SFGH’s bonds through the year 2032, it isn’t applying this known revenue source to lower the needed bond amount to replace the hospital. This revenue should be used to finance SFGH’s rebuild as a least-expensive solution, lowering burdens of this bond on taxpayers, and renters who face 50 percent pass-throughs from this bond.
SFGH admits construction may reach $943 million, underfunding the bond by $55.6 million. Additionally, SFGH uses a 7 percent annual cost escalation factor, even after it admitted recent hyperinflation for hospital construction has averaged 18.5 percent in cost escalation. This 11.5 percent gap will surely lead to massive cost over-runs.
There are additional reasons educated voters should be concerned about another probably disastrous bond measure, outlined at www.stopLHHdownsize.com.
Patrick Monette-Shaw
Accountability Advocate
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