This election, Santa Cruz and Monterey County residents served by the Watsonville Community Hospital will decide whether improvements to the hospital are worth an increase in their property taxes.
Measure N will only appear on ballots for voters in the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District, which spans an area from Aptos to Las Lomas. If passed, the measure would approve a $116 million bond to the hospital.
The bond would be paid by property taxes — residents in the district would pay $24 per $100,000 of assessed property value each year for the next 30 years.
“This is a turning point to turn this hospital around,” said Quiché Rubalcava, who has worked as a registered nurse at Watsonville Community Hospital for over 20 years.
Watsonville Community Hospital was incorporated in 1902. It was a community-owned non-profit for nearly 100 years, before it was purchased by a for-profit company in 1998. After two decades of disastrous private ownership, the hospital suffered a bankruptcy in 2022. But through an immense grassroots effort, community members and local leaders raised enough money to purchase the hospital, reestablishing it as a non-profit and creating the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District.
Now, though the hospital is community-owned, it still pays $3 million in rent for the land it’s on.
“This bond will give us the opportunity to buy the land to really secure the healthcare for the county for the next 30 years,” Rubalcava said.
The money provided by Measure N would also fund other improvements, including:
- Expanding the emergency room to double its current 12-bed capacity
- Upgrading X-rays, MRI and CT scanners
- Renovating and modernizing the building and facilities
See Santa Cruz County’s Impartial Analysis of Measure N
Rubalcava says all the improvements are crucial, but especially the emergency room expansion. When the emergency room is at capacity, the nearest alternative is at least a 20-minute drive away, he said.
“You can’t measure how important it is to have a hospital that’s…five minutes away…to save your life, or to help deliver that baby, to save your heart, to save your brain,” he said. “You can’t put a price tag on your health. It’s more important than money.”
There isn’t organized opposition to Measure N, but the ballot measure still faces an uphill battle. Because it would levy a new tax, Measure N would require a two-thirds vote to pass. The low voter turnout expected this election could impact its success.
“We hope it passes, because it's going to make a difference to people's lives,” said Rubalcava. “Especially in an emergency when life is critical and things can change in a minute or or less than a minute.”
