TRANSCRIPT OF THE PUBLIC MEETING OF COUNCIL HELD IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, CITY HALL, 141 WEST 14TH STREET, NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C., ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2004 AT 8:30 P.M. PRESENT: COUNCIL MEMBERS STAFF MEMBERS Mayor B.A. Sharp A.K. Tollstam, City Manager Councillor R.C. Clark B.A. Hawkshaw, City Clerk Councillor R.J. Fearnley S.E. Dowey, Deputy City Clerk Councillor R.N. Heywood D. Sigston, Manager, Lands Councillor C.R. Keating Councillor D.R. Mussatto Councillor B.W. Perrault Chair: Mayor Barbara A. Sharp Re: Lions Gate Hospital – File: 3300-07-02 15E 301 The meeting was called to order at 8:39 p.m. Moved by Councillor Mussatto, seconded by Councillor Perrault THAT the meeting recess. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY The meeting recessed at 8:39 p.m. and reconvened at 10:20 p.m., with the same personnel present. Mayor Sharp The first presentation this evening is Mr. Ron Erdman. Mr. Ron Erdman, Chairman, Property Committee, Lions Gate Hospital Foundation Your Worship and Council, my name is Ron Erdman; I am a resident of West Vancouver and I am the representative of the City of West Vancouver to the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation. I am the Chair of the Property Committee on the Hospital Foundation and I served as the co Vice-Chair of the Hospital Foundation. I am a volunteer that has worked with the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation for the last three years and the prior four years as a volunteer with the Burnaby Hospital Foundation. So I am coming to speak before you just for a few minutes tonight solely for the purpose of just giving some background. I have nothing in the way of advice or requests but still think it is important to just lay out no audio with that background I would just like to say that from our perspective we are involved in a not for profit foundation, that has no other interest than raising money. As background, we have a concern, we had a concern with the ownership of these lots last year and formed the Property Committee that I now am running for the purpose of dealing with problems related to liability and running a business that were a concern for us. These do not make a lot of money for the Foundation. Our Golf Tournament in June last year made 25 times more money in one day than these lots made for the Foundation in one year. We have had a relatively low source of income from an intense management activity with liability. We were trying to figure out what to do with it. September/October last year VCH came to us, the Health Board came to us and said they had decided to sell the lots that they owned in Block 52, the northern of the two blocks, where we owned four and if it was of interest to us we could join them in the sale. I guess the point that I wanted to make tonight and this is really the content of this discussion was that a very difficult time and a difficult decision and one that was thought through carefully and with much serious thought by the Foundation. We were very concerned that the Health Authority may take the proceeds from the sale of those lots and use those proceeds to cover whatever costs or deficits might have been an issue for the Health Authority. As people who are here to try and raise money for health care we have, what we consider more or less a non negotiable requirement in regard to our participation in this sale, which was that if we were going to participate or VCH was going sell we thought it was critically important that, that money come back into the community and go back into health care in this community and not be used for anything else. That position was one that caused a lot time and aggravation, a lot of negotiation with VCH. Our blocks by the way were not bequeathed to us, I think some people, they misunderstand it but they did come from surplus available funds to the hospital some numbers of years ago. So this money in fact has come from health care budgets in the past. We felt it was important having been allocated to the hospital in the past that it stay on the North Shore. So what we did is conclude the negotiation with the hospital where we ensured, by contract, that the money that would come from the sale of those lots held by VCH would be directed entirely back into capital requirements for health care on the North Shore. The other thing that we felt was important was the other lots not offered for sale, Block 52, which continues to be held by the VCH in the block south of the one you are discussing here tonight and part of our requirement in dealing with VCH at this time was that all of the future sale proceeds, should the Health Authority decide at some time in the future to sell those lots, must also go back into health care on the North Shore. To protect ourselves and insure that there was some reasonable assurance that, that would happen, we entered into a very formal and comprehensive legal contract negotiated with our own hired legal advisors and we have now received and hold what are called duplicate certificates of title for all of the lots in the southern Block 59, so that the Health Authority cannot sell those in the future without our agreement and without our surrendering of those titles to the Title Office and we have advised the Health Authority and have contracted as part of our agreement that we will not release those titles unless we can have The Corporation of the City of North Vancouver Public Meeting re: Lions Gate Hospital Page 2 of 32 February 16, 2004 reasonable assurance that the proceeds of any future sale from Block 59 goes to health care on the North Shore. I guess my purpose, just in summary, I mentioned it would be quick and I am finished, is that we felt that the highest priority to us was to ensure that any proceeds coming from sale of properties in the subject lots and in the future sale of properties from Health Authority held lots adjacent to the hospital, must stay on the North Shore and go into health care. We believe we have achieved that. We have a legal contract that obliges VCH to ensure that happens, and in return for what they have given us we have agreed to support the sale and that is why you see our name associated with the sale. It is not something that we initiated or something that we are driving but it is something that we have agreed to do in support because we feel that the highest priority to us, in regard to fundraising for health care, has been met by the terms of the agreement that we have negotiated with them. Thank you for your attention and I wanted to be available to answer any questions that people might have. Mayor Sharp recessed the meeting at 10:29 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 10:30 p.m., with the same personnel present. A motion was unanimously endorsed in the Regular meeting of Council this evening to continue the meeting after 10:30 p.m. Mayor Sharp The next presentation will be from Ellen Pekeles and Janet Woodruff. Ms. Ellen Pekeles, Chief Operating Officer, North Shore Coast Garibaldi Health Services Your Worship and Council; I am Ellen Pekeles, I am the Chief Operating Officer for North Shore Coast Garibaldi Health Services in Vancouver Coastal Health and joining me is Janet Woodruff, who is our Chief Financial Officer and Vice- President, Systems Development and Performance. Really appreciate the invitation to speak tonight on Lions Gate Hospital, our public health care system, the changes that have occurred and our land sale. I will speak to our success and challenges in health care on the North Shore and Janet will discuss the systems that are in place to measure and monitor the quality of our outsource work as well as the land sale and we will be happy to answer questions when our presentation is done. First, to speak of some of our successes, this past Saturday we had an Open House at Lions Gate Hospital and I want to thank the Councillors that actually attended. I think it was a very successful afternoon and some of the areas that we showcased were our new MRI, which is the most advanced technology west of Toronto; it has been in operation since October. There are many ventures that we have undertaken with our Foundation, including our new chemotherapy area, our renovated rehabilitation unit, which desperately needed to be moved The Corporation of the City of North Vancouver Public Meeting re: Lions Gate Hospital Page 3 of 32 February 16, 2004 from our activation building, which is a very old building and needs replacement. We also showcased our digital radiology fluoroscopy table and one of our operation rooms. I think one of the powerful messages in our operation room was just demonstrating what an increase in daycare surgery can do for people. There is lots of discussion about the fact that Lions Gate used to have 350 beds and we now only have 220 beds and beds are really not a very good indicator of what is going on in a hospital.