A Montesano City Council member who came to the Grays Harbor Hospital District 2 board meeting last week to chastise hospital officials for potentially jeopardizing an $800,000 sidewalk and paving project in Montesano, got no response from board members or administrators.

In fact, the controversy that has created a storm of criticism in the community in the past month, didn’t come up at all, except in public comments from council member Dan Wood and Montesano citizen Dale Hensley. Board members listened to the criticism, but didn’t respond or ask questions of hospital CEO Tom Jensen.

The hospital district operates a clinic on Pioneer Avenue in Montesano. The city has received a federal grant — with help from the local Council of Governments — to make the street improvements and got required easements from public and private property owners along Pioneer so that sidewalks could be widened by up to a foot. The hospital, however, didn’t grant the easement and some Montesano officials say the delay could have sunk the entire project.

Facing a deadline, the city moved ahead without the hospital district, meaning no improvements in front of the clinic and increased costs to re-engineer the plan.

“While every other property owner, including a public entity, worked with the city on these improvements, the hospital district held out,” Wood said.

“Cooperation among local governments is strong in Grays Harbor and is facilitated by the good work at the Grays Harbor Council of Governments,” Wood said.

“Cities, the PUD, Transit Authority, Port, tribes and others are at the table with the Council of Governments. The hospital district is not.

“The hospital district is a public agency. It is the creation and instrument of the people in parts of Grays Harbor County. It’s time that the hospital district come to the table and cooperate with other public agencies that also are creations and instruments of the people of Grays Harbor.”

Since the hospital district is owned by the public, it can’t merely give away its assets, which would include things such as an easement. Montesano officials put the value of the easement at $97 and have said that the hospital proposed a trade for the easement, first a parcel of land and when that was rejected, advertising space on a billboard the city was considering building on the land.

According to the city, it offered right of first refusal to advertise on the billboard, but the hospital wanted a $40,000 penalty if the billboard wasn’t constructed by a certain date.

Wood called the request “outrageously inappropriate.”

In its statement last week, the hospital district said that at no time did hospital officials think the value of the trade it was proposing was $40,000. “This simple misinterpretation of the language led to a complete breakdown in communication between the two parties,” the statement continued.

Hensley said board members seem to have been left out of the loop. “I’m having trouble understanding this,” he said. “I’ve looked at board minutes and I saw nothing” to indicate that the board had been kept informed.