County makes demand for an honest VA response

Historic City News has obtained a copy of correspondence to the Executive Director in the Office of Construction and Facilities Management concerning the VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic; requesting a formal response identifying a definite date the VA will be vacating the existing location, as well as the location of the interim clinic location for St Johns County veterans.

The county has continued to press for answers and offered cooperation; including an accommodation in the county’s new Health and Human Services Center for either an interim or long-term facility.

“Our county’s veterans are no closer to knowing where they will be receiving their medical care when January 1 rolls around, than they were this time last year, or three-years ago,” Assistant County Administrator Jerry Cameron tells Historic City News. “No matter what the county has offered, someone in some department always finds fault with it.”

The correspondence file between the county and VA over the past 12-months is a little one-sided with many letters and e-mail requests to the VA simply being ignored. Cameron suspects that he has never heard the real reason why the VA has persisted in refusing the county’s help.

“Not only has the VA failed to accept any of the numerous solutions we have offered, or arrived at their own solutions, but they have not provided to the county responses to the majority of our correspondence,” wrote County Administrator Michael Wanchick.

Describing the “long standing concern” as having now become a “looming crisis”, Wanchick is now insisting that the VA provides some truthful answers.

For example, in a recent reply, dated October 10, the VA indicated that they anticipate awarding the “interim space lease” before the end of the calendar year. Cameron says that’s preposterous. If they don’t already have a firm lease in hand, there is no way they can build a clinic in the 90-day window that would follow — not even an interim facility.

Historic City News previously reported the withdrawal of the county’s offer to have the VA use the new Health and Human Services building as interim space for the clinic until a permanent location can be constructed. With no resolution at hand, Wanchick has made clear that it is time for the VA to expedite their deadline, vacate the existing clinic, and “give our veterans and other affected parties certainty for future planning”.