Death of a community hospital
With sadness, anger, and concern for future generations, we announce the impending death of Santa Paula Hospital, serving Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru, and the Santa Clara Valley for more than six decades.
Its death will not be natural.
Santa Paula Hospital will die from a political decision by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.
Born in 1963, Santa Paula Hospital was one of only three California hospitals built through community donations. After bankruptcy closed it in 2003, Ventura County purchased and reopened it in 2005.
It was never simply a building. It was our emergency room, safety net, and assurance that when something went terribly wrong, hospital care was close to home.
Over time, services disappeared. The ICU and maternity units closed.
Plans for a new East Area 2 hospital were abandoned. Deferred maintenance accumulated. Now residents will travel outside the Valley, including to Ventura County Medical Center, for hospital-level care.
Meanwhile, the Ventura County Health Care Agency has received approximately $98 million in grants, incentives, and advances since 2023 to sustain the county hospital and clinic system amid financial difficulties.
Yet Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru are being asked to surrender their hospital.
Santa Paula deserves an accounting of the decisions, spending, planning, and leadership that brought us here.
When the beautiful hospital on the hill takes its last breath among roses nurtured by community volunteers, history should remember who closed it, who warned them, what alternatives existed — and which community paid the price.
No services are planned. The community wishes to grieve among those who loved and cared for this hospital — without elected officials, selfies, or Blue-Ribbon committees.
In lieu of flowers, the community requests continued advocacy for emergency hospital care in the Santa Clara Valley.
Rick Castaniero, President, Santa Paula Latino Town Hall
Experience can’t be automated
Corporate America is facing a growing and underreported problem: experienced professionals in their 50s and beyond are quietly being pushed out of the workforce.
After decades of building careers, many experienced workers find themselves laid off and replaced by younger, lower-salaried employees, often under the assumption that technology or AI can fill the gap.
But experience, judgment, perspective, and institutional knowledge cannot be automated.
The scale of job losses is alarming. More than 1 million U.S. job cuts were announced between January and October 2025, a 65% increase from the same period in 2024. At the same time, older workers continue to report significant barriers to finding new employment.
This is more than an individual hardship. When experienced workers are pushed aside, businesses lose mentors, leaders, problem-solvers, and institutional knowledge. Workers lose years of income and the ability to remain productive contributors to the economy.
Technology should enhance human experience — not be used as a reason to disregard it.
America must confront age discrimination and rethink how we value experienced workers. People should not become professionally invisible simply because they reach their 50s or 60s.
If we truly believe that people may work into their 70s, we must create a workforce where experience remains an asset — not a liability.
Mae Gordon, Simi Valley
Do we need emergency system?
Re: your Aug. 27 story, “Proposed fairgrounds project greeted by angry opposition”:
Whether or not Global Stack USA is building a so-called emergency response system or a data center, I am opposed. But I have other questions.
Does the state want or need a statewide emergency response system? Is this a build it and then ask the local communities to join for a price?
We as a community have a first responders emergency response system. The Ventura County sheriff and fire departments showed the public how they responded to disasters when they were fighting the Thomas Fire and other fires that followed.
Why the fairgrounds property in each county?
Lastly, why would anyone build an emergency response system in a designated tsunami zone? Anyone living along Ventura’s coastal area knows where the markers are indicating a tsunami warning.
Jamie L. Harvey, Ventura
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Unnatural death of hospital, pushed out of workforce | Letters
