Board puts brakes on rehab clinic

A federal rehab clinic aimed at getting teenage Native Americans clean seemed like it was on the fast track. The project bogged down on Tuesday, however, when Yolo supervisors balked at supporting the project

The Indian Health Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, wants to build a $17 million, 32-bed facility on 12 acres about 7 miles west of Davis. The land is part of the 642 acres owned by the U.S. General Services Department but held in trust by D-Q University, which would have to sign on to the project.

The Yolo County Board of Supervisors liked the idea of helping Native Americans ages 12 to 17 kick alcohol and drug abuse when they first heard about the project at their March 7 meeting, but refused to follow staff recommendation Tuesday to support the project. Instead, the four-member board agreed to kick the issue to a two-member subcommittee made up of supervisors Jim Provenza and Don Saylor, both of Davis, who agreed to work with federal officials, county staffers and worried landowners.

Board Chairman Matt Rexroad led the charge, saying the tie between a tribal college and a rehab clinic serving Native Americans is weak.

“This could be located whether at D-QU or on the moon,” he told the visiting federal envoy. “It has no relation with D-QU and the student body that’s there.”

Instead of chewing up 12 acres of prime farmland in rural Yolo County, the feds should work to put it on land that’s already developed, he added.

“My concern is not so much with the type of facility and programming, but the location on ag land right in the middle of Yolo County. I’m skeptical why it needs to be located on D-QU as opposed to anywhere. Why can’t it be anywhere?

“Shouldn’t we be encouraging these people to go to Winters, Davis, Woodland or West Sacramento to site this facility?”

Trying to put a rehab clinic that serves Native American addicts in an urban environment is a political minefield, said Gary Ball, staff architect and project lead for the proposed center. The Indian Health Service has tried, but “being in a city location — we are surrounded by neighbors. We get an awful lot of reluctance from those neighbors.

“We found that farther out, more remote is the best way to go.”

Then why not build the clinic next to the already-existent university to save farmland, Rexroad countered. Yolo County, after all, used its General Plan to encourage rural residents to cluster their homes together to save the maximum amount of ag land. Why not do the same thing here?

The Indian Health Service through the clinic hopes to partner with and help resurrect the struggling tribal college, said Margo Kerrigan, director of the service’s California area, but it’s no place for teenagers fighting to get clean. “It’s rundown. It looks like a war zone, and we do not want our patient population interacting with the student population.”

Residents, too, had their concerns, which centered around crime and public safety.

“Where there’s a need for drugs and alcohol, those drugs and alcohol will find their way to that location,” said West Plainfield resident Carolyn Taneyhill, explaining that she’s not so much worried about the patients, but about the visitors who come to see them.

“I feel very vulnerable out in the country,” she told the board. “What’s going to protect me from these elements? We just don’t need to have a large population moving in on us from the outside.”

— Reach Jonathan Edwards at jedwards@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8052.

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=32596

Posted by Jonathan Edwards on Apr 13 2011.
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