Editor,

Once again we have a vacancy on our public hospital board. We sorely need some new, fresh and independent blood. The four remaining members will be eager, as always, to appoint a like-minded person to continue the practice, since 2008, of never having a dissenting vote cast at a board meeting. By so doing, the board allows our increasingly dictatorial hospital administration to operate free of all restraints, checks and balances.

The remaining board members are all between 69 and 74 years old; while they keep saying they’d like to attract someone youthful, they keep appointing their old cronies and political allies who then later run for election, usually unopposed, as incumbents.

If you are an independent thinking, community minded citizen who resides in District 5 (north or east of Oak Harbor), I urge you to apply right away.

Then, let’s closely scrutinize the selection process, and see if the board desires to remain the insular, non-transparent and non-diverse group it’s become over the last decade.

Rob Born

Greenbank