Please vote to approve the revised Prop. 1 for EvergreenHealth to provide much-needed upgrades to your 50-year-old community hospital. Your vote matters, needing only a few hundred more votes than the April ballot measure. Passage will assure that the quality care provided to you and your family will be available for another 50 years.

Key areas of the bond issue are: Seismic upgrades to assure the hospital will meet FEMA standards and survive a 9.0 earthquake; an advanced ICU to replace the one built 35 years ago; a modernized FMC for the Eastside’s most-preferred birthing center and America’s first “baby-friendly hospital;” technology and facility upgrades, especially in outpatient care and mental health.

EvergreenHealth was created by voters from Kenmore to Sammamish in 1968. They formed KCPHD #2 and approved bonds to build a new 76-bed hospital that opened in 1972, replacing the old Kirkland Hospital downtown. I joined the ER staff in 1973 and have spent my entire career there.

EvergreenHealth now has more than 300 beds, is ranked among the “Top 100 Hospitals in America” by Healthgrades, and provides unique services such as free patient parking, a geriatrics clinic, a free 24/7 nurse consulting hotline, palliative care, Evergreen Hospice and Home Care, a five-star stroke center, youth mental health, etc.

Voters elect the board that runs EvergreenHealth. It meets four times a month, including with a group of more than 40 community advisors, while most hospital boards are appointed and meet less than once a month.

Your hospital district tax rate will not increase (currently about $11 a month for a $700,000 home). That’s about half the cost of your library tax. The bond term will extend out a few more years.

Please vote to approve Prop. 1.

Chuck Pilcher

Kirkland