David Lynn and Amy Andrews, co-chairs of Citizens for Healthy Neighborhoods (CHN), met with ARMC representatives Jack Drew, CEO; board members Carl Nichols and Julian Franklin; Elaine Cook of corporate communications, and Athens Clarke County Planning Director John Stockbridge at the Talmadge House (Outpatient Surgery Center) to discuss the scheduling of meetings for the 15-member advisory committee, the agenda for those meetings, and the resource people we wanted in attendance. The advisory committee is to be composed of five CHN representatives, five ARMC representatives, and five representatives of Athens-Clarke County at-large who will discuss alternatives for ARMC's growth.

The discussion broke down fairly early on when Julian Franklin and the other ARMC representatives told us that 1) we were under the mistaken assumption that residents would have input on the five year plan, and 2) the purpose of these meetings, as viewed by ARMC, is to listen to our concerns, and not to negotiate or to agree to any definitive actions. The "recommendations" that this committee makes will be given to the ARMC board who will make all decisions. The inferences and language used by Carl Nichols and Buck Griffin in communicating with us in previous meetings on the five-year plan were unquestionably misleading. In those meetings, they sought to appease us and spoke in conciliatory terms, but they made it clear at the meeting yesterday that the term "negotiate" was not in their vocabulary. As to what we believed that they agreed on in the press release (agreeing to revisit the five-year plan), they claimed that it was not approved by them, therefore there was no agreement, implied or otherwise.

We spent a great deal of the meeting discussing the five year plan, with Mr. Franklin telling us that we were naive to have bought homes in this area, knowing that the hospital wanted to expand. He also told us that by buying up the east side of King Avenue, ARMC would have helped stabilize the neighborhood but since they had conceded that, we would have to deal with the neighborhood's decline ourselves. His lack of regard for the houses in this area was on the verge of being insulting. His presence was enlightening, though, because he clearly showed how far apart ARMC's decision-makers and residents are in our thinking. Carl Nichols and Jack Drew talked in more politic terms, although it was clear that they agreed to do no more than listen to our concerns on the five year plan. Mr. Drew said he has asked the hospital's engineer to revisit parking to see if it can be reduced or relocated. He said that they may even consider adding a floor to the parking deck. He also talked about minor redesigns of the medical building, but said that they were not going to move it.

It was an uncomfortable impasse, but we still felt that the summer meetings were a necessity. We set a schedule with those present--tentative dates are June 28 and 30, July 12 and 27, August 9 and 23. At the first meeting, the 15 member committee will tour the hospital. The committee will then tour the neighborhood at the second meeting on June 30. We asked to have John Fregonese attend a meeting to present the concepts of the ACC master plan to the committee, and ARMC agreed to that. He will be in Athens July 8-9 and August 4-5. Mr. Drew was going to be out of town during his July visit, so we were going to try to schedule Mr. Fregonese during his August visit to Athens. Mr. Stockbridge stated that Mr. Fregonese does not want to get into discussions on this particular issue and if he spoke, it would be to address the master plan concepts in general terms. Throughout this discussion, Mr. Stockbridge remained silent. He said that his position was as a technical resource only and he was instructed not to take part in any debates.

We gave Carl the names of our five committee members: David Lynn, Amy Andrews, Clint McCrory, Gwen O'Looney, and Jim Hawkins. The five members from ARMC will be Carl Nichols, Jack Drew, Helen Mills, Al Stone, and Ed Graham. The at large members chosen by Carl Nichols are: Tal DuVall, Diane Adams, Smith Wilson, Keith Elke, and one yet to be named. Amy Andrews had sent a letter to Carl a week before, requesting that CHN be in agreement on the at-large members. He showed reluctance to do so, citing some member names who he thought would be agreeable to us. We asked him to let us know when he proposed a fifth member and we would revisit the issue.

We proposed that a facilitator for the meetings be secured as we would be discussing difficult issues. We suggested using someone from UGA's Institute of Community and Area Development or the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Jack Drew recommended a facilitator that ARMC has used for their departmental meetings, Larry Emmelhainz. We said we would discuss this with our group and get back with him on our decision.