Your child’s life is worth far more
than $16 a month
It appears that man suffers from a failure of imagination
and we are maladapted to dangers that lurk beyond the immediate. Our
bodies are primed for fight or flight responses, for running from a
Saber Tooth Tiger or clubbing a Neanderthal on the head. We are able
to appreciate the danger of a speeding car but not the less-immediate
dangers of a growing gut, a warming planet or, in this case, the failure
to fully fund the Bolinas Community Firehouse and Clinic. Lack of funding
doesn’t engage our adrenal glands, but it should.
Point Reyes Station has the only paramedic ambulance
in West Marin. In the summers there is a paramedic ambulance that waits
for drowning tourists in the Stinson Beach parking lot. But right now,
if you had a heart attack in Stinson Beach, you would have to wait about
35 minutes for the ambulance to wind its way down from Point Reyes Station.
If the ambulance was already on another call, then good luck. The firestation
would send an emergency medical technician, or EMT, who would be unable
to administer drugs or perform minor surgery that could save your life.
The EMT would arrive in a firetruck, not an ambulance
and be unable to transport you to the helicopter pad on the Big Mesa.
If you needed a helicopter ambulance, you would have to wait for the
Point Reyes Station ambulance, or if that was in use, the ambulance
from Woodacre.
This also affects other West Marin residents. If the
paramedic ambulance is sent to Bolinas, it will be unable to respond
to calls from Point Reyes Station.
The new, 7800 square-foot, seismically tested
firestation will house a paramedic ambulance bay (the operating costs
of which will have to be seperately funded), disaster relief storage,
three firetruck engine bays, and a community meeting room for disaster
planning, CPR classes and other community events. It will also be located
on the Big Mesa, where most residents of Bolinas live, and adjacent
to the helicopter pad in case a helicopter ambulance is needed.
The new 2900 square-foot medical clinic will provide
much needed space for the doctors and nurses who are currently shoehorned
into the tiny clinic on Wharf Road. The new, handicapped-accessible
medical clinic will have four exam rooms, a consultation room, x-ray
service, and a treatment room, with direct access to the helicopter
pad for emergency ambulance flights.
The total cost of the Bolinas Community Firehouse
and Clinic will be $5,500,000, the cost of a Seadrift mansion, or a
vintage Ferrari. It will be worth that much, and far more, to those
who will use the new facility to cheat death; to those who would otherwise
die for lack of a tracheotomy tube that only a paramedic, and not an
EMT, can insert into a blocked throat.
A Firehouse Parcel Tax bond raised $1,675,000 in 2004,
about half of what was needed for the firestation portion of the project.
The project could not use a bond measure to pay for the medical clinic
because it is a private non-profit. But still, when the project managers
put the bond before the people, they only asked for half the costs of
the firestation. This was a political calculation on their part, and
a mistake.
The project managers hired a political consultant
at the beginning of the capital campaign, who told them what they already
knew: there was a hard-core group in Bolinas who would vote against
just about any tax. They are artists and craftsmen who are getting old
and living on fixed or meager incomes. They think that the current firestation
is fine and question the need for anything better. The consultant and
the project mangers figured that this group would vote against any bond.
On the other side were those who have more money and would probably
approve a bond that provided the full cost of the firestation. Between
theses two groups were the swing voters, who would decide whether the
bond would pass with the required two-thirds approval.
David Bunnett, president of the Coastal Health Alliance,
that will operate the medical clinic said, "Our consultant told
us that 20 percent would vote against any tax and 60 percent would vote
for any tax. The swing voters are artists who like to be left alone."
That left a swing vote of twenty percent of the voters, or 200 people.
Since 60 percent of voters could be safely counted on to vote yes, only
six percent, or 60 people were needed to achieve two-thirds approval.
"Passing taxes in Bolinas is very tough,"
said Kim Bender, Capital Campaign Director of the project. "Bolinas
is very tax averse. In order to pass a bond, two-thirds of voters had
to approve. There are 1000 registered voters and we had an 85 percent
turnout. If we doubled the tax and just 12 people turned it wouldn’t
have passed."
In order to raise the full cost of the firestation
it would have required a parcel tax of $200 a year for 40 years. The
project directors decided that swing voters could not be counted on
to approve a parcel tax of more than $100 per year. So they asked for
$98 on improved parcels and $40 on unimproved parcels. The bond passed
with 78 percent of the vote.
Fire protection and emergency medical care
are core services that a government should provide. It is embarrassing
that services as fundamental as a paramedic ambulance have to go begging
for private donations. The firehouse should have been fully funded by
a tax on those who would benefit from it: the citizens of West Marin.
Then the money that was raised privately could have already fully funded
the non-profit medical clinic. The parcel tax should have been put before
the voters at $200 per year, or $16.66 a month. Many people pay $100
a month for their cell phones or $60 a month for their satellite television,
or $50 a month for Internet service. They can certainly pay $16.66 for
their firestation and ambulance.
As of this date, private donors have given $650,000;
the Marin Community Foundation has given $600,000; the Tides Foundation
$200,000; other foundations gave $70,000; Marin County has contributed
$300,000; and other government grants have totaled $110,000. An additional
bond from the Bolinas Fire Protection District contributed $500,000.
This, along with other grants and contributions has raised a total of
$4,412,500. But the project still needs more than a million dollars.
If private donors come forward with $600,000 it is hoped that the California
Health Facilities Administration will contribute $250,000 and other
foundations an additional $200,000.
This means that the project still needs about $3,000
from each family in Bolinas. Since many in Bolinas are unable to give
$3,000, the more fortunate will have to give progressively. The project
managers are asking for, "stretch gifts," of $5,000 from the
moderately well off and much more from the rich.
"We need some of the substantial fortunes to
come forward," Bunnett said.
It is unfortunate that families will have to
write checks for $3,000 and up instead of paying an additional $8 a
month. But that is where we stand and that is what is required. Since
we are poorly adapted to foreseeable but in-imminent dangers, let me
offer some help.
Imagine that you have just left a concert at the Bolinas
Community Center and are walking arm in arm with your husband down Wharf
Road, when he clutches his chest and falls to the ground. You call for
an ambulance. And then wait, your husband in your arms, until an EMT
shows up and tells you that he can’t administer the drugs your
husband will need to live. He tells you that the paramedic ambulance
in Point Reyes Station is on its way. You wait. The seconds seem like
minutes, the minutes seem like hours. Five, ten, fifteen minutes go
by, and then, before the ambulance can arrive, your spouse dies in your
arms, looking up at you for the help that only a paramedic can provide.
Now, while you are still pumping adrenaline and the
prospect of death feels present, go to your checkbook and stretch.
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