SDC Town Hall draws ‘dream team’

What may turn out to be one of the most important public meetings on the painful topic of transforming, or closing, the Sonoma Developmental Center drew more than 200 people to an SDC Town Hall at the Altamira Middle School auditorium last Thursday, Aug. 20, facilitated by freshman state Sen. Mike McGuire.

What made the two-and-a-half- hour meeting so valuable wasn't so much the input from the attendees – many of whose stories were familiar if no less excruciating from earlier testimonies – but the names and faces at the front of the room.

There also seemed to be tantalizing glimpses of a future for SDC – a future that was not merely shuttered buildings and abandoned people but, perhaps, an opening for partial continuance of some level of services, if not care, at the 124-year-old facility.

Along with McGuire, who chairs the Senate's Human Services Committee with oversight of the state's Developmental and Regional Centers, other attendees included elected, appointed and career executives in the state developmental health department. These included U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, state Sen. Lois Wolk, Assemblymember Bill Dodd, and Supervisor Susan Gorin.

The legislators at times seemed eager to underscore their bona fides on the issue.

'I'm not going to slow down my involvement with the Sonoma Developmental Center,' said Thompson, citing his previous position as a state senator heading the same committee that McGuire now leads. 'I'm all in, and I will be a partner in this effort.'

Wolk also emphasized her concern about the issue was sincere and educated, based on her legislative involvement in the closure of the Agnews Developmental Center between 2004-09; she also spoke of a family connection to developmental care that has cemented her interest in the fate of SDC.

Other Sonoma Valley participants on the panel included John McCaull of Sonoma Land Trust, one of the prime movers of the Transform SDC meeting held in May, just two weeks before the closure plan for SDC was announced; and Kathleen Miller, president of the SDC Parents Hospital Association, who drew the loudest spontaneous applause at her introduction for her forceful engagement on behalf of families.

From Sacramento, Department of Developmental Services director Santi Rogers – who was briefly the director of the SDC in the 1970s – and his regional director John Doyle represented the DDS. Surprisingly, the secretary of the state's Health and Human Services Agency, Diana Dooley, was also on hand. Dooley is a member of Gov. Brown's current cabinet, making her the highest-ranking member of the state government to attend an SDC testimony meeting.

Dooley was also in Brown's cabinet the first time he was governor of California, in the 1970s, and is regarded as one of Brown's closest advisors. To have her take such an active interest in the fate of SDC was taken by some to be highly unusual, if not encouraging. More than one person in the room called the assembled luminaries a 'dream team' that might be able to make something positive happen, and Dooley would be the unofficial star of that dream team.

The secretary itemized her three areas of focus in the discussion:

• the people who live at SDC;

• the staff and other employees of the developmental center;

• what will become of the land and campus .

She made clear that the 1,670 acres would not be declared surplus, reassuring some who have suspected it would be sold off to developers.

Several other speakers reiterated in their own way the three-point focus of DSC discussion, though Gorin staked out a slightly different approach by suggesting that the issue of the land – with its potential for open-space protection, as a wildlife corridor and potential addition to the state parks system – should be regarded on its own terms and not just an afterthought of the developmental center's fate.

'It would be a travesty if we missed this opportunity,' she said.

Many in the audience who took part in the question-and-answer session following the panel's statements commended the impressive panel of officials, thanking them for their obvious interest in the issue of SDC and its role in the Sonoma Valley.

But while the audience was polite, members also seemed wary of what the officials could actually do to assure that the state, or feds, don't simply pack up and shut down the venerable facility for the developmentally challenged.

As McGuire played Phil Donahue, roaming the audience with a microphone to elicit public comment, many of the people who spoke up voiced their concerns over how their loved ones would find treatment in a world without SDC.

Two dominant themes emerged as they have in previous opportunities for public input to the closure process. One is that the people at SDC are only able to do as well as they are due to the special quality of the rural developmental center which allows room for them to 'walk themselves sane' and a devoted and specialized staff.

The other, intertwined theme, is that SDC provides such unique and valuable services it would be absurd to shut it down, only to try to replicate its services elsewhere.

The process currently underway calls for a period of pubic comment until Sept. 1, through a variety of mechanisms offered by the DDS. This Town Hall was one such mechanism, recorded by the department to be included in its closure report submitted to the legislature on Oct. 1.

But while the state officials could make no statement indicating what they might recommend in their closure report, due to the constraints on their responses, there were glimmers of hope that seemed to peek out between the lines.

Neither Dooley nor Rogers would rule out that SDC would be closed altogether, cautiously saying that continued services of some sort were under consideration, though not yet decided. If the period of public input is to have any weight at all, it's difficult to imagine how they could say otherwise.

To a question about the federal government's financial pressure on the state to close SDC – which the questioner called 'extortion' – Dooley responded that the federal government is not requiring closure or decertification, leaving the door open to some form of continued federal support for some sort of transformed SDC.

The lack of a firm commitment by Dooley, Rogers and other state officials to keep open SDC has long troubled the facility's supporters, but at this point it would seem to be a procedural stance more than anything. McGuire acknowledged as much, apologizing for the panel that some of their answer 'will be squishy.'

Yet the heartache of so many in the audience could neither be ignored nor denied. If there is a credo that underscores public comment on the closure of SDC, it was posed by Father Tom Chesterman, a retired Episcopal priest, who has a son at SDC: 'A society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members.'

Brien Ferrell spoke of a recent trip to Lanterman (which closed its doors for good at the end of June 2015) to talk with disappointed relatives of that hospital's patients as a 'parade of horribles,' and asked how Sonoma can have any confidence that this process will be any better.

Rogers responded that there was keen interest in his department of giving Sonoma a better result. 'Things that don't work we want to have a remedy for,' he said, repeating that the period of public comment was still open – for another 10 days, until Sept. 1 – and encouraged everyone who had a story or suggestion to submit them.

Comment input form and methods, plus news, updates and more information can be found on the DDS's website at http://www.dds.ca.gov/SonomaNews.