Questioning Session

"When are we going to have an answering session?" asked Robert Howe, a Northfield resident, at last night's hospital restructuring public comment session. The Northfield Hospital Board of Directors hosted the event at the First United Church of Christ. The session was dominated by comments with few responses and questions with few answers. Steve Delzer, chair of the hospital board, opened the session with a brief background of the options the board is exploring. He then clarified that the purpose of this session was to gather community input on the options before the board makes its recommendation to the council.

The hospital board remained fairly true to the meetings purpose, although they did respond to several comments. At one point, in fact, Mayor Lee Lansing suggested they be more consistent in their decision to respond or not.

Around 50 community members attended the session. They voiced many comments about the need for openness and the need to keep employees in mind. They also raised several questions about the need to restructure and when their questions would be answered.

The Northfield News had a series of articles on this subject in Saturday's paper and will likely have an article about this meeting as well.

The Northfield Hospital has posted a variety of documents concerning the restructure exploration on their website.