Aurora ruling forces Oconomowoc to study options

How to proceed is the agenda for tonight's meeting

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 1, 2006

By AMY RINARD
arinard@journalsentinel.com

Oconomowoc - Aldermen and other city officials will meet with their lawyers behind closed doors tonight to discuss the city's response to a court ruling last week that cleared the way for construction of an Aurora Health Care hospital in the city.

Mayor Maury Sullivan said options on the table for the council and the city's lawyers include negotiating a settlement to the long-running lawsuit with Aurora, appealing the judge's ruling, allowing the hospital proposal to proceed through regular city channels or redoing the rezoning vote that sparked the lawsuit.

Aurora is seeking to build an 88-bed hospital in Pabst Farms.

"This time, we'd have to dot all the i's and cross all the t's," Sullivan said.

Within hours of the court decision, Aurora's construction firm filed an application with the city for a special use permit, beginning the process of city review of its building plan.

The next step, Sullivan said, is for city staff to review the application and ask Aurora officials to respond to any questions and concerns. When those questions have been answered, the project will go to the Plan Commission for review, he said.

City Administrator Diane Gard said the hospital project could be brought before staff for review as early as the next staff meeting on June 14.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge James R. Kieffer, the third judge to preside in the civil case, reversed a decision by a previous judge when he ruled May 25 that the city did not follow its own rules and procedures when it voted in favor of the rezoning without first having had an application asking for the action.

Aurora has claimed that the lack of a written application for rezoning, as well as conversations by city officials in closed meetings, made it difficult to oppose the rezoning.

Aurora sued the city in August 2001 after the Common Council rezoned a 43-acre parcel in Pabst Farms, on the north side of I-94 east of the Highway 67 interchange, so that a hospital could not be built there. The site is about two miles south of Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, which led the opposition to the new hospital plan.

In late March 2001, Aurora officials had announced plans to build a new hospital at the site.

At the time, the projected price tag was $85 million, but that estimate did not include the cost of buying land and equipping the hospital.

The cost to buy land, build and equip the hospital now is estimated at $166 million.

In the meantime, a coalition of area businesses strongly opposed to construction of another hospital in western Waukesha County said it will try to persuade city officials to again reject Aurora's hospital plan.

Bill Nantell, co-chairman of Concerned Business for Responsible Health Care, a coalition of more than 100 area businesses, said his group hopes to persuade city officials to "stay the course" and not allow a new hospital to be built.

"While the court's decision is a setback, the community leaders of Oconomowoc need to understand that the business community will once again rally in support of their efforts to oppose the duplication of services and excess capacity that an 88-bed, $166 million hospital will bring, and the increased health care cost burden delivered by such an unnecessary project," Nantell said.

The lawsuit against the city was put on hold in 2004 after Aurora focused its attention on another, nearby hospital site, this one in the Town of Summit south of I-94, and Oconomowoc city officials pledged to not speak out against Aurora's new plans.

But Aurora said at the time that if its plans in Summit did not succeed, the lawsuit against Oconomowoc could resume. In April 2005, the Waukesha County Board refused to endorse the town's approval of a land-use change to permit construction.

Aurora officials say they still prefer the Summit site for their new hospital but are moving ahead with the Oconomowoc location because the court ruling provided an opportunity to advance their plan to build a hospital in western Waukesha County.