Years Ago

Published 9:30 pm Wednesday, August 20, 2025

20 years ago

Architects and planners for the South Peninsula Hospital expansion project presented an array of cost-cutting options to the SPH Service Area Board on Monday night. A special meeting was held to brief the board on suggestions for keeping the construction cost of the expansion within the budget voters approved in a bond in 2003. While board members didn’t take a formal vote, at the end of the meeting the board members said they most supported an option to delay building new patient rooms.

— From the issue of Aug. 25, 2005

30 years ago

Deferred maintenance. It is a term that institutions use to describe what is essentially this: To save money, you don’t fix things that aren’t screaming to be fixed. But, eventually, the screams come. As city budgets have gotten tighter in recent years, projects from painting to new dock pilings have been delayed, Homer city officials say. That has produced what some are calling a hidden deficit. That deficit could come back to haunt the Homer City Council this fall as it attempts to balance its 1997 spending plan, City Manager Patti Whalin said.

— From the issue of Aug. 24, 1995