Daily Sitka Sentinel

City Mum On Offer Submitted for Hospital

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer

The city received at least one response to a request for proposals on the lease or sale of the old Sitka Community Hospital properties, but the city had no other information yet on the number of responses, whether a lease or sale was proposed, and what the offer or offers were.

The deadline to submit proposals was 2 p.m. Wednesday.

SEARHC spokeswoman Maegan Bosak said the Native health care consortium responded to the city’s call for proposals for the four parcels and buildings on the properties at 209 Moller Drive, 204 and 202 Brady Street, and 302 Gavan Street.

City Planning Director Amy Ainslie confirmed the city did receive at least one response, and that plans were to follow the process described to the Assembly, including providing the Assembly with an evaluation and selected proposal.

“Under advice of legal counsel, we can’t discuss responses to the RFP,” she said this morning.

“We are on track with the RFP deadline and process as established in the memo (from the last Assembly meeting),” she said. 

City staff plans to review the offer or offers as the process goes forward to place an advisory question on the October 5 ballot on the sale of the properties. The ordinance passed 6-1 at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting, and will be taken up for final reading Aug. 10.

“We are organizing and disseminating information to the evaluation team and are on track to begin that process,” Ainslie said. “While we’re in a deliberative process there shouldn’t be outside influence in that process. A deliberative process is confidential until complete.”

The schedule in the July 27 Assembly packet says the RFP review ends Aug. 18, and the Assembly will see the RFP results and consider the sale ordinance on Aug. 24. Final reading of the sale ordinance wouldn’t take place until after the Oct. 5 election, and results of the advisory question are known.

City Clerk Sara Peterson said the advisory question would be on the ballot only if the Assembly votes yes on final reading od of the ballot ordinance, and the offer on the property is a sale and not a lease.

The sale and lease process was prompted by a letter from SEARHC last fall expressing interest in purchasing the property. SEARHC currently leases the properties from the city, and provides long-term care and outpatient services at the former Sitka Community Hospital and Mountainside Clinic.

A number of Sitkans have spoken about other uses for the facility, and whether it made more sense to sell or lease the properties. But no entity other than SEARHC has expressed interest at the same level as the consortium.