A coalition of elected officials and Bay Area military veterans is urging President Donald Trump’s administration to reverse its decision to kill a decade-old plan to build a veterans health clinic in Alameda.
Standing on the steps of the city’s Veterans Memorial building Monday morning, the mayors of Oakland and Alameda, representatives from local and congressional lawmakers’ offices and more than a dozen veterans called on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to reinstate the $395 million that it axed from the project.
“Today we call on the Department of Veterans Affairs and the federal government to reverse this ill-conceived and irresponsible plan because you have failed to provide a complete and transparent explanation for halting this project,” said Joe LoParo, a Marine Corps veteran.
“Specifically, you have not released any feasibility, cost, or planned information to the public or to our local elected officials and representatives in Washington, D.C., to justify this plan,” LoParo said.
Funding has been hard fought
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said that during her time as a U.S. representative, she worked with multiple presidential administrations to help secure funding for the project, which was planned for the former Navy base at Alameda Point and included a health clinic and columbarium.
“The Trump Administration’s decision not to build a veterans clinic here in Alameda is unacceptable,” Lee said. “It’s a betrayal of the promise that we made to our veterans that when they come home, we will take care of them.”
A VA spokesperson said the department pulled the plug on the Alameda plan after “a thorough review of site conditions” revealed environmental contamination at the former Navy base.
“As an alternative, VA is developing plans for a community-based outpatient clinic in Oakland, which significantly increases Veteran access to care,” said spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz. “Veterans currently have access to care at ten locations in the San Francisco Bay area.”
“The Trump Administration’s decision not to build a veterans clinic here in Alameda is unacceptable. It’s a betrayal of the promise that we made to our veterans that when they come home, we will take care of them.”
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee
Still, Lee and Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft vowed to continue fighting for the project.
Also, on Dec. 10, and U.S. representatives Lateefa Simon, D-Oakland, and Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, along with both of the state’s U.S. senators, penned a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas Collins pressing him for more information about the decision.
“What I say to all of you here today, especially the veterans who are standing beside me, is we are not turning our backs on you. You didn’t turn your backs on your country,” said Ashcraft. “I do not accept this as a foregone conclusion. We do not shrug and say, ‘Oh well, I guess that’s the way it is.’ We stand up, we fight back, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Long waits and travel times for vets
Omar Farmer, a Navy veteran, said the Bay Area’s roughly 270,000 military vets are ill served by a VA health care system that’s already overburdened, that has patients bouncing from one clinic in Palo Alto, to another in San Francisco, to one in Oakland, to yet another in Antioch.
“The Alameda Point project would significantly improve wait times and travel times for those veterans,” Farmer said. “It would actually create a more efficient health care system Bay Area-wide by lessening the burden on already stretched thin facilities.”
Farmer said it’s also a matter of honor for the government to do right by its former service members.
“It’s imperative that this project moves forward. We held up our end of the bargain, now it’s time for the government to hold up theirs,” he said.
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