Vineyard Hospital Hikes Rates to Ease Pressures on Rising Budget
Deficit
By JULIA WELLS
Fees went up at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital this week for
the third time in 18 months, as hospital leaders work to tame a stubborn
six-digit operating deficit amid an industry climate that is gloomy on a
good day.
"If misery loves company, then I guess we are okay, but we are
trying to present numbers here that really work," said hospital
chief executive officer Kevin Burchill this week.
When campers from the Vineyard's own Camp Jabberwocky went on
an unusual tour in Canada this year, their slogan was a single question
that was at once jocular and earnest. "How's your
news?" they inquired in on-the-street interviews with everyday
people.
As the year 2001 comes to a close, it is perhaps an apt question for
the Vineyard: How's our news?
County Manager Carol Borer Signs Controversial Agreement with
Hospital Without Knowledge of Commissioners
By JULIA WELLS
At a scrappy meeting that saw plenty of disagreement but little in
the way of accountability for the disordered events of the last two
weeks, the Dukes County Commission this week tried to sort its way
through a jumble of conflicting facts surrounding a contract designed to
funnel $500,000 in taxpayer money into the Martha's Vineyard
Hospital.
The surprise decision by the Steamship Authority governors last
month to buy the New Bedford passenger ferry Schamonchi was pitched as a
sound business decision for the public boat line, but an internal
financial analysis done by the SSA shows that in fact the ferry is
expected to lose large amounts of money.
The boat line board of governors voted last month to buy the
Schamonchi for $1.75 million.
Contract talks between management and nurses at the Martha's
Vineyard Hospital are now at a bitter standoff, and hospital chief
executive officer Kevin Burchill said this week that he is prepared for
the possibility of a strike.
"Everything is now off the table. We're prepared for the
worst but we expect the best," he said.
SSA Public Hearing Set Tuesday at Crucial Stage In Planning for Future
By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer
The Steamship Authority will host a public hearing on the Vineyard early next week, marking a crucial juncture in a tangled discussion about the future of the boat line that was established to serve the two Islands - and about the role of expanded ferry service between the Vineyard and New Bedford.
The hearing begins at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the Oak Bluffs School.
Steamship Authority governors voted without dissent last week to
deny a license application from a private freight hauler to run
year-round service between New Bedford and the two Islands.
"Our focus clearly needs to remain on providing for the
Islands," said SSA general counsel Steven Sayers. Mr. Sayers was
point man in the staff recommendation to deny the license application
from Seabulk International Inc.
He arrived when the Martha's Vineyard Commission was still in
its early years - not yet a decade old, not yet accepted as a full
member in the peculiar society known as Vineyard government. In fact,
when Charles W. Clifford took over as executive director of the
commission in 1982, if the commission was anything at all in the Island
community, it was a point of controversy.
The jokes and gritty remarks about trophy houses and the Hamptons
have been circulating on the Vineyard for a couple of years, but last
week the Edgartown conservation commission got its first real-life
glimpse of a starter castle now planned for an unspoiled point of land
on the Oyster Pond.
