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Show EDITORIAL To Keep The Hospital Or Not? Let's face it folks. At this point there are very limited choices that will allow the county to keep Garfield Memorial Hospital and taxpayers must decide on Tuesday if they want their hospital or not. A one percent sales tax seems to be the most painless treatment for the ailment, and while the medicine may not taste very good, hopefully the cure will be worth it. County Commissioners faced with an immediate problem, : took a careful look at their two options: allow it to close or find an answer. In asking for your favorable vote, the commissioners have made what they feel is the best possible choice: place a large part of the responsibility for the hospital's operation on those best able to pay and who expect and require its services, too the hundreds of thousands of tourists who come during the short busy tourist season and pay some 60 percent of all of the sales taxes collected in the county. But the hospital is needed 365 days out of the year by those who live here all year and who have found their tax base increasingly diminished in the last 1 5 years by the loss of other industries and services. Almost all county residents must go out of the county to buy their big ticket items - cars, furniture, appliances, business equipment and even clothing and smaller items not readily available in the county as more and more businesses have closed. Therefore, a large amount of sales taxes that county residents pay actually go to other counties. Hospital employees are threatened with their jobs - and the county can't afford to lose more jobs. The services provided in the hospital's clinics and the jobs related to them are also threatened. What will happen to the county's ambulance service if every run that EMT's make takes them to hospitals in Cedar City, St. George or Salt Lake City? The ambulance run will be extremely costly to the patient who may have less certainty of surviving the very long trip. Will EMT's continue to serve when one ambulance run takes so much time out of their day? EMT's volunteer their services, and their employers pay them for their time away from their jobs. How long will they all be able to afford to do that? Can we really afford to lose our local clinics and our hospital? Just this past week, a local resident - living in the central part (See EDITORIAL on page 3-A) EDITORIAL From Page 2-A of the county not a visiting tourist was stricken with a heart attack. Without the emergency services available in his community, without the dedicated and skilled emergency . medical technicians, without the ambulance that transported him, and without Garfield Memorial Hospital where procedures could be performed to prepare him for his life flight life flight to Salt Lake City, he might not be alive today. In any emergency, time can be a critical factor, and a hospital physician can perform emergency procedures no EMT can do, so the first priority is get the patient to the nearest hospital as fast as possible. Our commissioners have traditionally shown care in spending the taxpayers' money an attribute sometimes not found, in more urban areas. The hospital needs sound management it needs to grow, not close. The next year will buy time to fully analyze the hospital operation and decide to either stay with IHC or try other means of management. Other hospitals have faced similar challenges and come through with great success. Garfield County residents have never faced a challenge without a fight, and they like to win. A vote 'FOR the tax is a vote for the hospital. |