This would be the third* non-profit to address healthy Lakewood after closing the hospital for a coffee shop, an ice cream parlor, and a dry cleaner. Ohhhh and offices for Mike's friends that are now managing the tens of millions of dollars taken from the public and given to the private foundations. As you see Mayor Summers is selling the same lies and misrepresentation as before, but this time it is going into the hands of the very people that told us we had to worry and close the hospital. Oh wait that happened before too. FWIW, CCF was paying for everything in this list before the Mayor asked them to leave.
Read the following letter, and read between the lines. "Lakewood Hospital Fund" "Live Well Lakewood strategic initiative that will benefit the community for decades." Hints at a third foundation run by people selected by the Mayor and his friends.
Not one penny of the sale of this fully functional public asset worth over $248 million has been returned to the public. Now the final millions head, like the other millions and property, to friends of the Mayor and Council President Sam O'Leary. Lakewood, you have been played.
In a letter to Lakewood City Council from Mayor Summers.
Dear Members of City Council, The Challenge remains – how can Lakewood become the healthiest community in America? This is one of the strategic objectives in the 2019 budget document. On March 5th of this year we invited over one hundred stakeholders, including each of you, to begin a community discussion about this question. Ninety individuals attended and through discussion, confirmed that:
1. Being a healthy community is important.
2. Working upstream on preventative measures by focusing on the Social Determinants of Health which make up 70% of the factors that affect our health is imperative
3. Equity and Access. Providing education, availability and opportunity for everyone in our community to be healthy.
4. Promote and provide education about healthy lifestyle choices and how healthier choices may prevent or reverse chronic disease.
5. Aligning and collaborating all the assets of this community is important to a successful outcome – a healthy community.
Twenty-one Lakewood residents and advocates who attended in March responded that they would be willing to meet monthly for up to a year to create and tell the story of this work to the community and its leadership and lay the groundwork for long-term sustainability. These twenty-one individuals convened as a work group for the first time on May 15, 2019 to begin a discussion on how this effort might be advanced.
Working with a facilitator, a schedule and calendar for the work group has been created with the goal for the group to develop recommendations for a strategic direction and/or model for the community to advance work towards being the healthiest community. The work group plans to work through the summer and hopes to present recommendations to the community, its stakeholders, potential funders and leaders sometime in September. Chief among these leaders is you, our City Council. Your leadership has many attributes. A very important and unique role you play is the stewardship of the city’s Lakewood Hospital Fund.
Health and wellness are not historically the work of city government. We have spent several years talking about our community’s health and the components of population health, wellness and clinical care. As a government we are uniquely positioned to convene and engage our greatest asset – our residents – to take on this strategic planning for our community. Ultimately, to be successful and sustainable, a framework to advance health and wellness should exist outside city government; but, this City has resources to invest in the future health of our community by supporting a Live Well Lakewood strategic initiative that will benefit the community for decades.
I urge you to keep tuned in, review the Live Well Lakewood information on the website and do some research on your own about what is happening across the country regarding various approaches to supporting healthy communities.
Sincerely,
Michael P. Summers
* LHA now - Three Arches Foundation
Healthy Lakewood - Non-profit to spend what was public money from the sale of the hospital.
Live Well Lakewood - A committee to spend the public money talking of being an new non-profit, and needing $8-10 million from the city to fund it.
Doubt it? Read the letter above.
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