Dear Editor,
Good morning and thank you for allowing me to speak during this public comment portion of your meeting. I approach you today with a request. A request to stop the disrespect that is being shown to myself, my fellow prior hospital board members that I served with, Jerry Klein and George Lemich. For the commission to label us as corrupt is not only wrong, but insulting. When one of you is introduced in the public media arena as a commissioner those comments made to the media and/or public airways is a representation of all of you.
I offer you the Webster definition of corrupt... “having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.” I can guarantee you not one of us ever did that and I take offense to being called corrupt.
What we all did was sacrifice our time as unpaid volunteer board members to try and make the hospital a better place to serve the patients and citizens of Southwest Wyoming. When these inaccurate labels are placed on all of us you not only label me, but you label some very outstanding individuals that I served with, including Dr. Tom Spicer, Dr. Grant Christensen, Robert Wallendorff, Harry Horn, Joe Manatos and Gene Carmody. All of us now have our names tarnished with these vicious attacks.
You as a group made the decision eight months ago to remove us as board members, you appointed a new board and then terminated Jerry Klein as CEO.
There can be a separate discussion whether that was justified or not, but the bottom line is that decision was made and it is time for all of you to move on.
There is plenty of disrespect and hate for individuals at the national level and I see no reason to bring that to the local level here in Sweetwater County.
I placed my name to be an unpaid volunteer for this board and I tried for nearly 10 years to fulfill those duties.
Show me respect for that decision along with the over 20 plus years that my wife, Marlene, worked as a Registered Nurse for the hospital and for my mother, Irene, who to this day continues to volunteer at the hospital gift shop. If that doesn’t show that the Kalivas family has a dedication to the hospital, then I don’t know what does.
The comments that you make and the tone that you set had a direct impact on the success of our county hospital. If you want that success to continue, it is time to move on from your decision made back in February and try to look to the future instead of rehashing the past.
Thank you,
Artis Kalivas
Green River
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