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David Tewes (with the Victoria Advocate) called me. David said that he had been reviewing a plan that Citizens Hospital has having to do with expansion. When he did this review he came across the fact that there was a city street involved with it and also that we had sold that city street to the county. He said did you discuss it in executive session and vote on it? I said we didn’t vote on it. I am sure it was discussed in executive session and more than once. I want to tell you how this situation evolved. Over two years ago David Smith, Charles Windwehen, Lynn Short, Vance riley, Judge Pozzi, David Brown with other hospital employees and Tom Schmidt and I met in Citizens boardroom. We talked about this project. We decided to start working on it, start putting it together and I was not opposed to it at all, in any way form or fashion, because right across the street is Victoria College. The Victoria College campus is larger than the Citizens complex and they control everything, all their internal streets, everything. As Citizens Hospital expanded, I saw no problem with them being in control of everything. There were some issues having to do with oversized pipes, water pressure, where to put fire hydrants, how to get emergency vehicles into the hospital, if there was a fire or something of that nature. It was an administrative thing to work out these details. As work progressed and I am talking about a period of two years, we discussed the issue and it was always what I refer to as a work-in-progress. The plans were being considered by our engineering department and the county’s engineering consultant. Other times work was being done by our legal department and the county’s legal team. When all the details were worked out, we got paid for the street and we gave a deed to the County. We made a mistake because it never came to the City Council for a formal vote. It is on the agenda now to ratify what we have already done. On a lighter note I just want to say that we have some other streets that we would like to sell to the county and we have a couple of streets that we will give to the county and we will give them some money if they will take them.

 

Will Armstrong it the mayor of Victoria.