To the editor: ProMedica is choosing buildings over people

8/30/2018

Here we go again.

About 100 peo­ple were laid off from ProMed­ica. This past June, ProMed­ica Flower Hos­pi­tal an­nounced a re­duc­tion in ICU beds. Both in No­vem­ber, 2013, and June, 2016, over 1,000 em­ploy­ees re­ceived buy­out of­fers.

And yet we are ex­cited with ProMed­ica buy­ing build­ings and mov­ing down­town. They built a new lab and are build­ing a gi­ant new ad­di­tion to Toledo Hos­pi­tal. It amazes me that they have so much money for build­ings, but not em­ploy­ees.

It seems like they should for­mally adopt a new slo­gan: “We in­vest in build­ings, not peo­ple.”

JIM PERLMAN
North Toledo

Click here to submit a letter to the editor

Time al­most out for Wa­ter­ville

Wa­ter­ville res­i­dents passed a Com­mu­nity Bill of Rights (Is­sue 3) by an over­whelm­ing 60-40 per­cent ma­jor­ity back in No­vem­ber, 2016. The Com­mu­nity Bill of Rights pro­tected res­i­dents from haz­ards like the NEXUS pipe­line and its com­pres­sor sta­tion emis­sions. Dur­ing a Jan. 22 coun­cil meet­ing, Wa­ter­ville Mayor Lori Brodie made a mo­tion to ac­cept a $20,000 set­tle­ment from NEXUS to al­low the construc­tion of the Nexus pipe­line through Wa­ter­ville. The money was ear-marked for a high-tech air mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem. To date noth­ing has been con­structed.

In Medina, Ohio, res­i­dents al­ready have done a base­line test for air qual­ity near the NEXUS Wadsworth com­pres­sor sta­tion. The test cost was $19,500. More tests are likely to fol­low this year as NEXUS goes on­line.

Why did Wa­ter­ville city coun­cil set­tle for only $20,000 when the costs to the com­mu­nity will be mul­ti­ples of that num­ber? With the 2016 vote, the res­i­dents had al­ready ex­pressed their de­sire to pro­tect their com­mu­nity from toxic emis­sions, but Wa­ter­ville’s mayor shirked her re­spon­si­bil­ity, po­ten­tially ex­pos­ing her town to un­rea­son­able risks.

PAUL WOHLFARTH
Ot­tawa Lake, Mich.

Two full terms for Nixon?

The Blade’s editorial board writes that al­low­ing a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor or spe­cial coun­sel to ne­gate a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion makes us “a ba­nana re­pub­lic,” which would mean that “the re­pub­lic is truly dead” (Aug. 24, “Let the peo­ple de­cide”).

If that’s the case, the time of death was 12 p.m. on Aug. 9, 1974. By The Blade’s stan­dard, Rich­ard Nixon should have served his full sec­ond term as pres­i­dent be­cause the Water­gate spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor had no right to ne­gate an elec­tion that Nixon won in a land­slide in 1972.

BOB SEYBOLD 
West Toledo