The people of Dayton have paid for Good Sam many times over by allowing the corporate thieves pretending to be a non-profit, Premier Health “Partners,” escape paying property taxes with the excuse that they provide health care to all. It’s been an accounting slight of hand for years and it should be stopped. You aren’t a non-profit when your CEO and top management is making over a million a year. End of story. You aren’t a non-profit when you can have your own private police force. Let’s cut the crap and move forward.

Premiers plan to demolish a community asset and do us a favor is a lie. But, since they’ll fight tooth and nail to stop competition from coming in, like The James, The Cleveland Clinic or Cincinnati hospitals, we need a non-hospital use for the building.

Hello Sheriff Phil “the torturer” Plummer. Sheriff Phil complains that half his over populated jail is filled with drug addicts and mentally ill folks. Actually, one in the same Phil, but you still think busting a drug dealer will stop the epidemic, nice try, but no.

We could convert Good Sam into desperately needed mental health wards and rehab facilities- that are secure, but better suited to deal with the problem than mixing that population with actual criminals. Having specialized health care professionals take charge instead of rent-a-wanna-be-cops (sorry to the professional correctional officers, the last few of you that haven’t been fired by the torturer).

With an average census of about 450 people (take the jail’s overcrowded 900 inmates, divide in half) that would nicely fill up about half the capacity of Good Sam- but given actual treatment takes longer than processing these people through the in-justice system, the population could climb to double that- or more. There are plenty of times when police who pink slip a citizen can’t find a bed at either Premier or Kettering’s facilities- because the number of psych beds is severely limited.

Even with 900 people in treatment, there would still be room for more folks. Here is where we could either place transitional housing for the chronic homeless (many of whom could also use mental health treatment). With the huge garage, providing a secure place to park (many homeless live out of their cars) we’ve started to tackle yet another chronic problem.

And, if we can shoe horn one more program in, transitional housing for new immigrants with an intensive ESL program. While Catholic Social Services may think that they are doing a great thing by plopping families into urban neighborhoods after coming out of countries where they don’t have grocery stores or public transit, teaching them together as a group- and working at acclimation together may create a higher success rate. Yesterday a car flipped in Walnut Hills as a driver tried to avoid a kid running into the street- because, well, the kid didn’t know what a street was yet.

While Premier may not want to have to compete with a community mental health facility, and the people of West Dayton might not be happy about housing a bunch of crazy folks or drug addicts, the reality is, it beats an empty lot on Salem and a jail downtown that’s so overcrowded that it’s become a death trap.

And, btw, please feel free to take this idea as your own and run with it. I seem to have lost all credibility for giving an old lady heckler the finger at the Montgomery County Democratic Party.