Medical Lake dodged a double dose of worry last week when the state released the first draft of a report calling for Pine Lodge Corrections Center to stay open.
Lakeland Village, however, wasn't so fortunate, with recommendations for massive reductions to take place over the next eight years that would leave the facility a husk of its former self.
This isn't the first time either Lakeland or Pine Lodge has been on the chopping block. The capacity of the 30-year-old corrections center was halved early this year following a 2008 cost/benefit analysis that at first called for the prison to be shut down.
Lakeland, a facility that opened its doors for the developmentally disabled in 1915, has a longer and more hassled history. Along with other Residential Habilitation Centers (RHCs), Lakeland's population decreased dramatically in the ‘70s after the government started rethinking how developmentally disabled people should be accommodated. Hundreds of residents were moved into state operated community programs and further reductions have taken place since, leaving an institution that once housed thousands abridged to the current 240 residents.
Many have been reminded recently of the early ‘90s when the state slowly phased out nearby Interlake School, resulting in 200 residents transferred to other RHC's and 400 jobs lost. That building is now a DOC storage unit.
We don't want to be alarmist – legislators will have the final say on whether or not they'll accept a final version of these recommendations. But whatever the arguments – budgetary, geographical or philosophical – state leaders seem increasingly eager to consider “consolidation” of this area's institutions.
Hopefully, while there's still time, the leaders of Medical Lake will discuss what the loss of a state institution would mean for the city and prepare worst case scenarios.
While institutions like Lakeland add a moderate property tax income to the town treasury, their real worth doesn't center on tax revenue, but the jobs they create. If the current recommendations are adopted, more than 650 workers will be laid off at a time when unemployment is at its highest point in decades. Many of these people live in Medical Lake and will be forced to look elsewhere for work if they see the key in-city industry fading.
Ever since Stanley Hallett used his political sway to bring Eastern State Hospital to town in 1891, Medical Lake has been known as a town built on state institutions. City leaders must guard against falling to the same fate as the Northwest “timber towns” of decades past which were left destitute after the collapse of public lands logging in the region.
The city has to do more to attract alternate industries for citizen employment in the unfortunate case of a loss of state facilities.
Administrators may understandably be hesitant to consider a future without facilities like Lakeland before anything is certain. While we agree this is no time to go shopping for a casket, it's high time a living will was drafted.
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