The “Rescue Deer Valley” effort got some attention this week, but limited progress toward our goals, so far. Articles were published in the Mountain Democrat, and the Sacramento Bee, regarding our protest to these proposed developments in Rescue. You can read the articles, and our “Letter to the Editor” to the SacBee, here. Both articles gave Native Directions a lot of space for their narrative. The Mountain Democrat reporter didn’t even take the time to get another opinion. The reporter for the SacBee did reach out, and we were able to get our position stated through quotes, although the article also published some hate mongering from another source. The price of being public!
The interesting insight from hearing Native Directions (NDI) perspective in these articles is that their public narrative focuses on the need, and the individuals they want to support, but they ignore our central disagreement – that this is not the right location. Our request is simple – put these facilities in San Joaquin County, for a myriad of reasons which we detail here. This simple request seems to be ignored in NDI public comments. If you boil it all down to “what is best for the patients,” then there is no reason you would build the facilities in Rescue, CA.
As far as progress, we are awaiting response from the Dept. of Health Care Services (DHCS) to the Senator/Assemblymember/County Board of Supervisors requests. I understand DHCS is investigating, but we have not heard of any progress. While it is amazing that Rescue Deer Valley has gotten unanimous agreement that these developments don’t make sense from our elected representatives, we still need to convince the State Agency that approved these proposals to reconsider. Follow the money, and the money is coming from DHCS to HomeCA (developer) and NDI, so we need to get DHCS to understand why these projects are not in the patient’s best interest, and especially not in the community’s best interest.
We are actively working on the next phase our protest, in case DHCS doesn’t get these developments moved, or stopped. To that end we will be conducting a fund-raising event with Concerned Citizens of Cameron Park/Rescue. Stay tuned for details as we firm up the time and place.
Rescue Deer Valley! 