The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - The Columbia County Health System board meeting last Thursday was a call to staff and board members to communicate positivity about the hospital district and to leave the past in the past as it hunts for a new CEO.

Current CEO Charlie Button announced his resignation earlier this month to take on a high-level position at a larger hospital.

The board members of the district spent four hours March 22 in a retreat to talk about the search for a new CEO. At the general board meeting later that evening, staff members had been invited to attend and hear the health system's message of unity.

Gary Schroeder, the district's CFO, who is set to retire this week after 23 years with the district, said staff members and board members need to stop telling community members and the press negative things about the district.

"What has happened in the past couple of weeks has dismantled a whole year of intensive effort by management staff to build a positive ownership value within our employees," Schroeder read aloud from a letter he had written. hellip; "After all the years of hard work, stress and agony that many of us have endured, our staff needs your support and the support of our communities. Also, if we really want to attract a quality, valuable CEO to our organization, we need to stop the cancer of negativity and embrace a positive representation of our organization and our communities."

Staff members spoke up and acknowledged that two years ago, things were tough at the hospital district. Morale was low and finances were weren't the best.

" I know we've had a rough bout when we did," said Jody Martin, the dietician for the district. "I think we're becoming a better facility."

Martin and many other staff members and volunteers voiced support for Button and the work he has done during his four years with the district.

Blaine Bickelhaupt, a former board member, was also present at the meeting. He said the critics are a small group of people who are angry.

"They need to get over it and move on," Bickelhaupt said.

He also said current board members need to be accountable for that they are saying and said he supports the district and what it is achieving and trying to achieve.

Board member Jack Otterson said there isn't only negativity circulating and highlighted a recent award to the Waitsburg Clinic for its work in the community from the Eastern Star group.

This conversation led to the desire that the board and staff members would like to find a CEO who can keep a good balance between providers and finances and maintains the current beliefs, values and positivity the district strives for.

"Let's have enough backbone to stand up for (the district)," Schroeder said.

Board Chairman Ted Paterson said "we're wast- ing time going back" and encouraged a transparent, community-involved search for Button's replacement.

The board Thursday night approved the CEO selection process it talked about at the retreat earlier in the day.

First, the district will announce the opening for an interim CEO who can run the district for no more than six months.

It will also announce the opening for a permanent CEO and gather resumes. Next, the district will filter the resumes and form a selection resume of seven people. The committee will include two board members, two staff members and three community members (one from Waitsburg and two from Dayton).

This committee will nar- row the candidates down to three to five people and they will be brought to Dayton to be interviewed by the board of commissioners.

The finalists will be carefully evaluated and a CEO chosen.

The board had originally wanted the applications to only be from residents of the Pacific Northwest, but Button said from the transient nature of the industry, it should be a nationwide search. He came from Wisconsin after all, Button added.

And if the district doesn't receive enough applicants of good quality, the interim can stay longer and the district can keep looking.

"It's going to take time to do this," Paterson said. "But we want a perfect fit."