Daily Sitka Sentinel

Hospital Appointments To Be Reconsidered?

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    The city clerk is asking the Assembly to consider rescinding the recent votes appointing two members to the Sitka Community Hospital board because of an oversight on seat designations.
    The hospital board has five seats, two of which require special qualifications, one for financial management and the other for health care.
    When the seats for finance and health care came open the city failed to advertise them as such. Connie Sipe and Dr. David Lam, who held the finance and health care seats, applied for new terms, and Mary Ann Hall was the third applicant.
    The Assembly voted last Tuesday to appoint Lam and Hall to the positions without designating which seats they would be in.
    City Clerk Sara Peterson said she noticed her error on Thursday, two days after the Assembly meeting. After conferring with City Administrator Keith Brady and City Attorney Brian Hanson, Peterson sent the Assembly a memo:
    “In my review of the hospital board appointments from Tuesday night I have discovered there were administrative errors. The two seats up for appointment were category specific, health care and financial, and should have been properly advertised and appointed as such,” she said. “It is my recommendation at the January 22 Assembly meeting that the body rescind their vote to appoint David Lam and Mary Ann Hall. If the motion to rescind is approved, our office will advertise for the two category specific seats beginning January 23 and bring forward applications for your consideration at the February 12 Assembly meeting.
    “In the meantime, continuing with historical practice, David Lam and Connie Sipe will serve on the hospital board until reappointed or replaced for the one additional hospital board meeting scheduled for January 24. My apologies. Please don’t hesitate to call, stop by, or email if you have questions.”
    The city has 18 boards, commissions and committees, and only a handful with category-specific positions, including the hospital board, the Local Emergency Planning Commission and the Sitka Historic Preservation Commission, Peterson said.
    “It didn’t cross my mind (the hospital seats) were seat-specific,” she said today. She said she noticed the error when she was reviewing agenda materials from Tuesday night. But she said she would like to correct the error.
    “It was my feeling it needed to go back to the Assembly,” Peterson said.
    She said she has already talked to Hall, a former med tech, who said she wants to be considered for the health care seat. Lam a medical doctor, and Sipe, the former executive director of Center for Community, also said they plan to seek the appointments if the positions are re-advertised.
    The language in the city code for the qualifications of the two board seats are, for finance, “a person having professional financial experience such as a certified public accountant, auditor, or financial analyst,” and for health care, “a person having professional health care experience, such as a physician, nurse, physical therapist or close equivalent.”
    If the city re-advertises the positions, they will be open to anyone qualified for the financial or health care seat, Peterson said. The motion to rescind and re-advertise will be on the agenda of the Jan. 22 Assembly meeting.