Last week, some resolution — and some sense of what the near future will bring regarding healthcare on our island — began to finally take shape in the ongoing saga of Vashon Health Care District (VHCD) and Sea Mar Community Health Centers. (See story, page 1.)

VHCD commissioners did the right thing last week in approving a longer sublease for Sea Mar, which will allow the organization’s continued operation at Sunrise Ridge until 2025, as it builds its new clinic in town.

The district did not achieve everything it had asked for at the bargaining table when it came to this resolution.

But Sea Mar — in exchange for a continuation of its sublease — did at least makes some significant assurances that it would remain accountable and transparent to the public, even as it continues to operate without the oversight of VHCD or its considerable tax subsidy.

We hope that Sea Mar’s very highly paid executives learned something about the tenacity and community-mindedness of islanders at that bargaining table — and how much value we place on having some measure of say in our own healthcare options.

Then, again, the executives could have learned that long ago, had they cared to.

Vashon’s more than 70% vote, in 2019, to establish its own health care district should have been the executives’ first clue that this is an island that is tired of top-down decisions by off-island healthcare entities as to how they will serve our ferry-dependent rural population.

Islanders here were willing to be taxed in order to have some measure of control over their healthcare choices, and our VHCD’s commissioners have ably served our island, even during a pandemic that severely limited their options in terms of retaining a provider for the Sunrise Ridge clinic.

The community’s vision to build its own healthcare clinic also long predated Sea Mar’s presence on Vashon, and that fact was always well-communicated by the commissioners in their dealings with Sea Mar.

The clinic’s own staff reflects the community, as well — it is largely comprised of islanders — who while they draw their paychecks from Sea Mar, clearly work for the people of Vashon.

Sea Mar’s local staff of doctors and support personnel are the best of the best — healthcare professionals who have chosen to support healthcare in their own community through a primary care practice that is based on neighbors serving neighbors.

We must never forget that the recent conflicts between Sea Mar and VHCD have nothing to do with the people who practice medicine and have support roles at the clinic, who have all served the island so ably in recent years.

All of the recent uncertainty surrounding Sea Mar’s continued presence on Vashon was not caused by them, and we are extremely relieved that these fine professionals will be allowed to continue to serve us — even as Sea Mar moves ahead with its plans to build a new clinic on the site of the Spinnaker Building.

It’s hard to even imagine the disruption to the staff’s work to help and heal islanders, had Sea Mar executives gone ahead with their plans to operate out of a hastily remodeled, aging office building, smack in the middle of a construction zone — much less the inconvenience and hardship to Sea Mar’s patients if that had happened.

So we applaud VHCD’s commissioners for forestalling that possibility, and we hope that islanders — even our most tax-weary ones — will now support the district as it finds its way forward to continue to serve our population.

There are many healthcare needs on Vashon that the district is now freed up to address, including its woeful lack of an urgent care facility, its need for many additional behavioral health services, and other programs that directly address our aging population.

We are fortunate here to have a vibrant network of organizations that understand the complex additional needs of our population, including perhaps most notably Vashon Youth & Family Services and the Vashon Care Network.

We know that VHCD’s able commissioners — who are also islanders and assumed their roles out of a deep sense of community service — will reach out to these organizations and the wider public as they find their new role in the community going forward.

Here’s to Vashon’s health, in 2023.