Corvallis Clinic vs. The Community's Collective Wallet

I received some interesting news from a Good Samaritan Hospital employee today. It seems the Corvallis Clinic is going to start building a new outpatient surgery center soon. You see, the hospital is a nonprofit organization under the stewardship of people who genuinely believe in doing what is best for patients and the community at large. The Corvallis Clinic, on the other hand, is a for-profit organization hell bent on maximizing the money they make off the backs of sick and injured people. If Clinic doctors perform surgeries in their new handy dandy surgical center, the Clinic can generate more profit, unlike performing surgeries at the hospital. (The hospital is also planning a new outpatient surgical center, so the timing of this decision is suspect.)

According to this hospital employee, a group of Clinic orthopedic surgeons was gathered in the hospital hallway discussing the on-call contracts with the hospital. As is the case with virtually every hospital, local doctors sign contracts with hospitals for the privilege of being able to see patients at the hospital and perform surgeries in-house. Part of that contract is the obligation on the part of the doctor to provide on-call coverage on a schedule. In other words, in addition to the physician's regular schedule, he or she must be available to see hospital patients for a set number of days each month.

The Clinic doctors apparently believe they should be paid extra when they are actually called in to see patients. Under their contract, they receive the same pay whether or not they are actually called in. It is standard practice to be paid for coverage and not for actual calls, but again, these for-profit doctors are apparently whining that they aren't making enough cash.

Now for some hearsay and conjecture. Having personally dealt with the Clinic in the past, with unfavorable outcomes every single time, I genuinely believe that part of the problem is that the hospital never turns away patients. When a patient without insurance or with low-income government insurance comes into the emergency room, followup care is handled through the Medical Officer of the Day -- the general practitioner, internist or family practitioner who is on call for that day. Under the on-call coverage contracts, those patients have a right to followup medical care.

But no. The Clinic, once again, demonstrates a love of money and disdain for the poor. It isn't the first time. The Clinic doesn't accept new patients who are on Medicare or Medicaid. If you don't have insurance? Forget it. The worst part about this policy is that there are some specialties in town where the only choice is to see a Corvallis Clinic doctor -- oncology and sleep studies, for example. I guess if you're a poor patient with cancer, you're just going to have to die.

No, Jesus isn't coming.

At least not yet.

That sound that woke you up at 3:30 in the morning Saturday night really was just thunder. It wasn't a secret spy plane, fireworks, a gunshot or a bomb. It managed to set off numerous car alarms all over town and apparently, some people were actually whispering in conspiratorial tones about what the noise really was.

It. Was. Thunder.

Miss World

I suppose I should get this out of the way, important local gossip that it is: Courtney Love's mom, a Corvallis therapist, has written a book. Linda Carroll's new book Her Mother's Daughter is purportedly a memoir, encompassing more than just the tawdry details of her famous daughter's public life, but you know Courtney's escapades won't hurt book sales any.

Open enrollment coming to an end

The Corvallis School Board has decided to end open enrollment in Corvallis, without bothering to hear arguments from parents, students or teachers -- the people directly affected by this decision. They claim that it needs to be done for budgetary reasons. Since schools receive financing based on attendance, and some schools are obviously preferred, the lesser-favored schools are hurting for cash.

Instead of telling parents they have to accept the substandard school two blocks away from their house, why not simply pool the cash throughout the district, and divide it more equitably? Maybe then, those schools that don't perform as well will have better tools to remedy the inherent problems.

This decision is not borne out of what is actually best for the students. It's a bureaucratic method of manipulating cash. The fact that the school board had already made up their collective minds before holding public hearings is simply appalling.

The background information can be read here.

Benefits of living in a college town

In any town with a university, there are bound to be too many fake-and-bake tanning places and several drunken idiot situations, such as frat parties spilling over into neighbors' yards, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks most of the time. In Corvallis, Oregon State University brings a lot of good to the town, including an educated populace (puts us far ahead of Albany, nyah), diversity (at least as far as whitebread Oregon is concerned), a vibrant arts scene, actual sporting events (no, Little League doesn't count), better restaurant choices and even tangibles such as grants to help local elementary schools fund their physical education programs.

I'm bringing this up now because I want to mention the Saturday Academy run by the College of Engineering at OSU. It's a nonprofit, extracurricular program emphasizing math, science and technology in classes geared toward middle school and high school students. The classes cost between $20 and $85 each and are held at various locations, including the campus, Hewlett-Packard, Good Samaritan Hospital and the Hatfield Marine Science Center at the coast. Kids can do everything from building robots to extracting DNA from genetically-modified foods to dissecting squid and practicing phlebotomy on mannequin arms. There is tuition assistance available for families who can't afford the basic fees. This is an amazing opportunity for local kids to get some real hands-on experience and information about potential college majors.

Burton's Sunnybrook Restaurant

The main story on the front page of the Sunday Gazette-Times (or the Mid-Valley whatchamacallit combined version of the Albany Democrat-Herald and the GT) is about Burton's Sunnybrook Restaurant closing after some 80 years of operation, the last 38 years or so under the Burton's banner.

I know what it means to have a place* -- a restaurant where the waiters remember you, where there are often familiar faces at the neighboring tables, where the food is comfortably familiar. For many people, Burton's was that place. For me? No way. In fact, I have a hard time believing that anyone under 50 actually liked the food there, unless they were drunk or too hungover to focus. A third of reviewers apparently agrees (granted, the sample size is small).

The food was really pretty awful. I hear the pies were the exception, so to be fair, I will clarify that I have never tasted pie at Burton's. I never bothered sticking around for dessert, because the main course was consistently lousy. I have eaten there probably five times over the past decade, always at the request of someone else. Every single time, without fail, the waitstaff treated us with impatience and mild scorn and the food was overcooked and bland, not even in that excusably passable way that most classic diners squeak by with time after time. But old people apparently eat there all the time. Perhaps once your tastebuds start their inevitable decline, once your hair starts showing silvery strands and you show up in patterned polyester pant suits, the bitter serving staff will be kind and respectful and the food won't taste like shoes. Maybe.

*My place would have to be El Tapatio, in the Albertson's shopping center. It's not gourmet cuisine, but the enchiladas are always decent and the servers remember us enough to know we want extra salsa without having to ask.

Rain, rain on my face

Can't avoid the most obvious Corvallis news:



I found these pictures equally interesting. These pictures are also of the same general area, Highway 34 near the bypass. (Well, the last picture was obviously taken before there was a bypass.)

From 1996:


And from 1964:

I don't care how small this town is -- it's just not news.

Today, the illustrious Gazette-Times published a news story of vital importance. It seems that a little old lady was visiting her late husband's grave and got her foot stuck in the mud!

I know. I can't believe it either.

Meanwhile, out there in the real world, Osama bin Laden is issuing new threats and the federal government is trying to obtain Google's search records. Good thing we have the GT to keep us informed about Clara Connelly and her brush with tragedy!

Bloated Sense of Importance?

A little background, before I jump into the main topic today. For more than four years, every night between 5 and 6 p.m., a group of residents stands in front of the Benton County courthouse with peace-promoting signs and flags of various types, waving to passing cars. This peace vigil has taken place every single day since October 7, 2001 -- the day the U.S. started dropping bombs on Afghanistan. The crowd swells and diminishes, but is never absent, no matter how cold or rainy or hot it is outside. Every now and again, a "support our troops" demonstration happens across the street, but it is far more inconsistent and, honestly, sort of pathetic. The people participating in the peace vigil, including several veterans of various wars, are simply standing up and protesting the latest invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So what is the other group trying to accomplish, exactly? Don't they want their well-supported troops to come back home?

Anyway, I find the level of commitment inspiring. I have participated in the vigil myself, off and on, mostly off. I am not a total pacifist, and I personally supported the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But when the war drums started sounding in earnest and George W. Bush's finger pointed at Iraq, I jumped up and joined my fellow citizens in fervent protest. I am a wimp. I have stood in front of that courthouse for maybe 60 days over the past four years.

My point: This town has a very strong pro-peace/anti-war contingent.

At the city council meeting last night, a handful of these people arrived, hell-bent on making a difference. Leah and Bart Bolger presented a petition to the council, signed by 800 like-minded folks, asking the council to pass a resolution in support of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. (As a matter of perspective, there are approximately 40,000 people of voting age living in Corvallis. The petitioners only managed to get a fairly unimpressive 2% of the eligible voting population to sign, despite an effort begun more than six months ago.) The mayor and city council decided to schedule a public hearing so that the pros and cons of this resolution could be debated further.

This move was not entirely unprecedented. In April 2003, the city council passed a resolution taking an official stand against the Patriot Act and reaffirming their commitment to protecting the civil rights of Corvallis citizens.

I love the idea that Corvallis feels important enough to pass resolutions addressing federal foreign policy. I can't quite figure out what this is really supposed to accomplish, however, other than allowing the creators of the petition to feel as though they have truly taken some sort of tangible action against the war. And I'm not so sure that the purpose of the city council is to provide such bragging rights to such a tiny percentage of townspeople.

Maybe the rest of us should consider this encouragement to start our own petitions. My goal for the upcoming year will be to gather signatures hoping to sway the city council to adopt the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as our official town religion. Somehow, that seems just as relevant.

Safety Vs. Sentimentality

If you have been a child or have parented a child in Corvallis in the years between 1989 and 2006, then you have probably been to Wildcat Park. Wildcat Park is this great complex of wooden fort-style play structures, tires, bridges, poles and swings that was built at one of our local elementary schools 17 years ago. It is undoubtedly the most-loved playground in town, host to numerous birthday parties and picnics over the years. Unfortunately, it has been loved to death -- it has been deemed unsafe and is now closed. A snippet from the Corvallis Parks and Recreation Division press release states:

The audit of Wildcat Park, carried out by an independent consultant with expertise in playground safety, indicates significant safety issues, including adequacy of safety surfacing material; structural safety of support columns; unsafe spacing of structural and non-structural parts of equipment; non-compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); plus many other equipment safety and ADA concerns.

It seems pretty straightforward, right? But since the announcement was made, there has been a minor controversy brewing. Apparently, the architect who designed Wildcat Park specified that the structures be built with southern yellow pine. Instead, pressure-treated Douglas fir was used, which doesn't last as long. The company also provides maintenance on their structures, which the school district apparently decided to handle themselves in 2003. Some citizens are upset that the Corvallis school district published an opinion indicating that maintenance or repair would not be enough to bring the structures to code, when certain aspects might have been fixed and preserved, rather than tearing the structures down completely.

There are now a couple of signs posted on lamp posts in the northern part of town calling for petitions! Meetings! Maybe even an organized protest! The actual level of outrage seems fairly low overall, maybe not even enough to warrant Blue Level on the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terrorist threat advisory system. Which is good. Because really, no matter how cool the playground is, if it's unsafe, it should be replaced.

Maybe the people posting signs could organize a fundraiser instead so that the new playground equipment is even better than what is being replaced. Naaaah. Instead, we'll probably end up with a whole lot of continued griping, interspersed with nostalgic sniffling, until the new, probably neon, plastic behemoth is built. That would be a shame, indeed.

Claim to Shame

I suppose I would be remiss to ignore the recent Kelley Wirth debacle. Kelly Wirth, until recently, represented Corvallis and parts of Philomath in the Oregon House of Representatives. She was considered something of a wonderchild -- a young, attractive, single mother who championed liberal causes with a healthy idealism for three straight terms. During the last term, she started showing signs that things were amiss, behaving erratically and not bothering to show up for congressional sessions and votes. She allegedly was also boinking one of the Congressional janitors, until his girlfriend found out and ran Ms. Wirth down with her car, causing some fairly serious leg injuries.

For a town this size, that would have been enough to call "scandal." But no, there's more.

When the Salem police asked to search Ms. Wirth's car, a routine procedure during a criminal investigation, she refused. A warrant was obtained and lo! She was refusing the search for a very good reason: she didn't want the cops finding out about her meth stash. After her mugshot made the rounds of the local press, even the most loyal Democrats were calling for Ms. Wirth's resignation.

She did announce her resignation, but delayed the official date by a couple of weeks. She still had to attend to one final task.

Nobody really paid attention to the list of aides working for Ms. Wirth during her legislative tenure. It wasn't particularly newsworthy that Ms. Wirth's mother was listed as a legislative aide -- a practice banned in the U.S. Congress, but permitted in a state where legislative salaries are quite low. Apparently, nobody cared that Ms. Wirth's mother was raking in $3,000 in public tax money per month, despite never actually being seen around the office. But it did draw attention when Ms. Wirth gave her dear Mom a pay raise, first to $3,500 per month immediately after her arrest, and then to a whopping $6,500 per month on November 1st. All in all, she quadrupled her staff salaries during her last month in office. When the Oregonian published this bit of news, she rescinded the raises, but at that point, her fall from grace was pretty much complete.

So... where the hell is Corvallis?

Some background on the town, for those of you who are not acquainted.

Corvallis is a town of approximately 50,000 people, located in the heart of the Willamette Valley in Western Oregon. The town is about 90 miles south of Portland, 45 miles north of Eugene, an hour from the Pacific Ocean and two hours from the Cascade Mountains. The Willamette Valley is wine country, home to some of the best pinot noirs in the world, and the region is utterly gorgeous -- green, lush, temperate. The rumors about Oregon rain are partly true, but the rains in this region are interspersed with periods of sun on most days, often leading to dramatic streams of light shining through billowing black clouds. Rainbow weather.

The town is host to Oregon State University, a PAC-10 conference university, and, as such, has all the trappings of typical college towns. Intellectuals and pseudointellectuals outnumber the rednecks, which is rare in Oregon, outside of Portland. There are plenty of restaurants, decent indie cinema and small-town theater, plenty of live music and Da Vinci Days, a festival dedicated to science and technology. That sure beats the typical "Olive Week!" type festivals I've attended. We have an abundance of locally-grown organic produce and an alternative cooperative grocery that sells only cruelty-free, organic foods. Downtown Corvallis is full of thriving shops, from quaint cross-stitch stores to high-end Italian furniture stores. There are no malls, no Wal-Mart (although we do have an older K-Mart) and the general feeling seems to be that the residents want to keep Corvallis small and friendly.

We have one local newspaper, the Corvallis Gazette-Times, circulation approximately 12,000. I have an ongoing love/hate relationship with the GT, as we call it, and will just put them on notice now: You are often going to be a target of this blog's diatribes. I worked there for five years and took real pride in contributing to the flow of vital local information to the populace. However, the parent company, Lee Enterprises, bought the Albany Democrat-Herald and merged the two local papers into a sort of minor conglomerate, with a shared Sunday issue. Since that time, the paper has seriously gone downhill. Local news is the emphasis, as it must be, with the fantastic Oregonian providing plenty of world, national and state-wide news and several other regional papers delivered here in town. But the GT has become sloppy, with too many AP wire articles cut short by several paragraphs (sometimes in mid-sentence!) and really awful proofreading and grammatical errors that detract from the news being provided. In addition, sometimes the search for a local side to larger stories seems like blatant pandering. On the other hand, sometimes that is better than the fluff pieces about homeless puppies. So, GT -- you stand warned.

I will also be covering local issues involving the city council and local school board. Not all issues, as I don't have the time to analyze every minor ordinance or cover every PTA meeting, but some.

For now, thank you for reading this far. I hope we can become better acquainted over the next few months. If you live in Corvallis and would like to see certain issues raised or discussed, please feel free to email me by clicking this link. If you want to be taken seriously, please provide enough detail that I can check your facts and confirm that you do actually live here.

Welcome to The Corvallist

I'm starting this blog as a forum to discuss my little town -- Corvallis, Oregon. I moved here as a teenager in 1990 and have tried moving away twice, only to come running right back. Quite simply, Corvallis is the best place I have ever lived. I have traveled extensively and occasionally fantasize about living in various places, but in my heart, this is home.

So why bother writing about it? This won't be a love letter to Corvallis, not entirely. My aim is to focus on issues the town is facing. Change anywhere is inevitable, but with the current toxic political climate and various business/human interests and population changes both locally and globally, I want to see the best aspects of this town preserved. The citizens of Corvallis are a diverse bunch, at least ideologically, and building consensus on many issues is unthinkable.

There are those who want to turn Corvallis into something else -- another red dot on the map like Albany or Salem -- and I don't want to see that happen.