THE POA BULLETIN March 05

There has been a great deal of discussion recently about The Villages Regional Hospital (TVRH). Let’s focus on what our Villagers really want.

Start Expansion Now – Residents want the hospital expansion to start now. Residents don’t want to wait until 2006 for another vote on the hospital tax bill. There is so much opposition to the tax idea that a vote in the 2006 election would likely result the same turn-down. So, where would we be then? Still out in the cold with no expansion. Residents want the expansion to start now – no more excuses. Why should we tolerate a single moment’s delay in starting the expansion of our hospital?

No Tax – Residents see no justification for the separate Sumter County hospital tax. In this area of favorable demographics and high demand, there is no need for a public tax handout. The hospital should be able to operate successfully in our community. If LRMC management says it cannot or will not proceed without the tax, then we need new owners for TVRH who are willing to proceed. A corollary here is that there should be no hospital tax on Villagers in Marion or Lake Counties if the Sumter County Tax idea is finally done away with.

No Foundation Give-Away – Residents don’t want to give away 20% of revenues, taxes, or anything to a private foundation, especially one headed up by one of the wealthiest families in the state. The provision in the hospital tax bill by Representative Gibson to give 20% of the tax proceeds to the Morse family foundation was repugnant to most Villagers.

Better Management – There are just too many stories of poor management, inadequate training, wasted supplies, neglected patients, and those long waits in the emergency room. TVRH is apparently making progress in addressing these problems, but much more needs to be done. We don’t want these problems, and we don’t want excuses.

New Owners – LRMC and its unsatisfactory financial position appears to be the major obstacle to the expansion of the hospital. Furthermore, Mr. Harold Schwartz, as mentioned in the last issue of the POA Bulletin, considered that LRMC didn’t really want to build a hospital in The Villages so as to protect its business position with the main LRMC hospital in Leesburg. The POA thinks we would be much better

off with any one of many hospital management companies that would relish the opportunity to own and expand our hospital. Why should we put up with LRMC and its many problems and its irritating “no-can-do” attitude? LRMC’s delays here are morally wrong because people could die waiting for LRMC to start the expansion. Let’s get new owners now!

Geriatrics Department – Residents want a top-notch geriatric medicine department as one of the main specialties in the hospital. Let’s focus on, as Mr. Harold Schwartz said, a “healthy lifestyle” for our residents. And, when we need health care, we want the best. TVRH should focus on the needs of our age-bracket residents in The Villages and be the best it can be.

Help From Representative Gibson – Residents want a solution now, and Representative Gibson may be in a good position to broker a deal. He is on the LRMC board and has easy access to LRMC directors. Voters are unhappy with his sponsorship of the tax bill and his efforts to pass 20% of the tax proceeds back to the Morse family foundation. Actually, he may have gotten us into this mess by implying to LRMC that the tax would pass and/or suggesting to the developer of The Villages that there were goodies (the 20%) for the foundation. Well, now it is time for Representative Gibson to get us out of this mess by using his office and his powers of persuasion to find a solution. He should light a fire under LRMC management and directors and insist on an immediate solution for the benefit of Village residents. Perhaps he can enlist the aid of the developer of The Villages to help someway with the financing.

Review Financial Statements – The POA has asked several times to see LRMC’s 10-year financial forecasts for the TVRH operation. We have also asked to see the two Ernst & Young feasibility studies. LRMC has consistently refused to provide the information which we know it has. If this information could confirm its inadequate financial position, or even justify the need for the hospital tax, why wouldn’t LRMC provide this information for community review? The short answer is that LRMC cannot justify the need for the tax and hopes to escape closer financial scrutiny by stonewalling the POA request. As Harold Schwartz suggested, LRMC appears to protecting its Leesburg facility by avoiding building much of an operation in The Villages that would take business away from LRMC. LRMC apparently looks at The Villages as being just a “cash cow” to support the Leesburg hospital.

Summary – Residents should have the best hospital it can have – and, the expansion should start now. No more delays. No more excuses. No more self-serving comments from LRMC with its “no-can-do” attitude. Our advice to LRMC: Either start the expansion now ... or get out of the way and let someone else do it.

The article in last month’s Bulletin on the Mock Vote for Villages officials neglected to explain the details and rationale for the sampling size and procedure. Consequently, several questions were asked about the suitability of the 298-person sample. The POA provided the following information to several readers who questioned details of the survey:

Surveys like the Mock Vote are often done with a very low percentage sampling of the population. The U. S. Census Bureau, for example, routinely does national surveys with sample percentages in a range of 0.04% to 0.005%. Based on an estimated Villages population of 50,000, this would indicate a sample of no more than 20 compared to the 298 used in the Mock Vote Survey.

In another example, the Nielsen Media Research Company routinely studies households in major metropolitan markets for TV viewing. Sample sizes are usually about 800 homes in markets including New York and Los Angeles with populations in excess of 15 million. Sampling rates for these are usually around 0.016% of all households in those cities. Using this 0.016% sampling rate in The Villages would suggest a sample of 8 people for the Mock Vote Survey.

The Mock Vote Survey used a sample of 298 out of a population of about 50,000 for a sampling rate of 0.6%. That is a sufficient size when compared to these other studies just mentioned. We don’t claim statistical accuracy – but, these results are representative for the subject matter surveyed based on adequate size and acceptable sampling techniques. The suggestion that a 10% sampling rate was needed would have produced unnecessary over-sampling.

With the answers coming back in an almost 9 or 10 to 1 ratio, the Mock Vote results are straightforward for a “no” vote on the basic retain vs. not retain questions.

Furthermore, the population in The Villages is rather homogeneous in terms of age, income, lifestyle, family situation, and other demographic factors. This substantially reduces the need for a larger sample size. And, everybody on the pro and the con sides had an equal opportunity to vote.

Also, the questions in the Mock Vote Survey were not complex and required simple yes/no-type answers to just four questions. The survey would have been much more complex if we had asked, for example, about TV viewing in the 8 p.m. hour. Individual answers here could easily have numbered more than 50 for each question and would have required a much larger sample to be accurate. The Mock Vote Survey was fairly simple which indicated a smaller sample size.

The results of the Mock Vote Survey were consistent with the survey results we found in two previous surveys. See the February, 2003, and the June, 2004, issues of the POA Bulletin in the archives section of the POA website. In these surveys, which asked for an evaluation ranking of various issues or people, Mr. Wahl ranked consistently at the bottom of the rankings. This tends to confirm the validity of the Mock Vote Survey and the low opinion of residents for Mr. Wahl. Ms. Andersen and Mr. Rohan were not surveyed previously.

We do acknowledge that the headline of the Mock Vote story should have read: “Huge Negative Percentage Vote....” The headline was perhaps open to misinterpretation and may have suggested to some a huge number of votes when we really were reporting a huge negative percentage vote.

Whether you liked the results or not, we hope that reporting this study will be helpful for everybody in the dialogue about our community’s government.

We should point out that the article did mention that the POA thinks Mr. Wahl is a capable administrator and that The Villages runs well under his administration.

Finally, the Bulletin article devoted most of its space to a discussion of solutions to the problem. Rather than dwell on the really embarrassing results, the POA proposed a common sense solution that might help to address the problems and make changes for the better. We hope that these suggestions are implemented by the VCCDD. If they are, we could make worthwhile progress on solving these problems.

In the October, 2004, issue of the POA Bulletin, located on our web site in the Archived Bulletin Section, the details of cash receipts and disbursements for the Recreation Amenities division are displayed under the section entitled "VCCDD Financial Statements."

The November, 2004, issue shows the use of the monthly amenity fee broken down by Maintenance & Administration and Debt Service. This shows that about 60% of the monthly amenity fee is used for Debt Service.

Debt service is being used to pay off the bonds issued by the VCCDD to enable it to purchase a variety of common properties and assets from the developer of The Villages. The supervisors of the VCCDD, effectively appointed by the developer, have agreed to the transaction with the developer. Residents were not able to vote their approval of these transactions or vote to accept the debt repayment obligation. So far, the principal amount of these bonds amounts to over $400 million to be paid off over up to 30 years by residents.

Editor’s note: The POA has not received a response to this or any of the earlier letters sent to LRMC directors. LRMC seems to be stonewalling the POA on these issues. And, the losers so far are Village residents because the expansion has not yet started, and may not ever start as long as the hospital is owned by LRMC.

The VCCDD is starting to place park benches at various locations along the cart paths on Buena Vista Blvd. and El Camino Real Blvd. However, nobody is using them. To encourage usage, the VCCDD is paying sitters $5.00 per hour for sitting on the benches and waving at passers-by. To claim the payment, sitters have to produce a daily log of sitting, detailed by location, date, time of day, names and addresses of passers-by, and a count of waves generated. Payment will be made in Villages dollars, except that real dollars will be given to Patron members plus a 10% premium.

The person who was to become St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Wales about AD 385 as a pagan. He was sold into slavery at an early age by a group of Irish marauders that raided his village. During his captivity, he became very religious.

He escaped from slavery after six years and went to Gaul where he studied in a monastery for twelve years. During his training he became aware that his calling was to convert pagans to Christianity. He returned to Ireland as its second bishop.

St. Patrick was successful at winning converts. This upset the Celtic Druids. He was arrested on several occasions, but escaped each time. He traveled throughout Ireland, establishing monasteries across the country. He also set up schools and churches which would to aid in the conversion of the Irish country to Christianity.

Much Irish folklore surrounds St. Patrick's activities. Little of it has been actually substantiated. He is said to have given a sermon from a hilltop that drove all the snakes from Ireland. Of course, no snakes were ever native to Ireland, and some people think this is a metaphor for the conversion of the pagans.

His mission in Ireland lasted for thirty years. After that, St. Patrick retired to County Down. There are several accounts of his death. One says that St. Patrick died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, on March 17, 460 A.D. His jawbone was preserved in a silver shrine and was often requested in times of childbirth, epileptic fits, and as a preservative against the "evil eye." Another account says that St. Patrick ended his days at Glastonbury, England and was buried there. The Chapel of St. Patrick still exists as part of Glastonbury Abbey. Today, many Catholic places of worship all around the world are named after St. Patrick, including cathedrals in New York and Dublin.

Originally a Catholic holy day, St. Patrick's Day has evolved into a secular holiday.

One traditional icon of the day is the shamrock. And this stems from a more bona fide Irish tale that tells how St. Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity. He used it in his sermons to represent how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity. His followers adopted the custom of wearing a shamrock on his feast day.

Since the holiday began in Ireland, it is believed that as the Irish spread out around the world, they took with them their history and celebrations. The biggest observance of all is, of course, in Ireland. With the exception of restaurants and pubs, almost all businesses close on March 17th.

The St. Patrick's Day custom came to America in 1737. That was the first year St. Patrick's Day was publicly celebrated in this country, in Boston. In American cities with a large Irish population, St. Patrick's Day is a very big deal. Big cities and small towns alike celebrate with parades, "wearing of the green," music and songs, Irish food and drink, and activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games. Some communities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green!