On Tap from the Pub

By Tom Field

Executive Summary:

Thirty-five Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in 21 states could close or be completely reconstructed under a $2 trillion infrastructure campaign released in a report mid-March.

Systems re-engineering, anyone?

I remember it like it was yesterday. President Franklin D. Roosevelt shows up at our very own Veterans Administration campus in Salem to dedicate the beautiful complex.

Okay, so I wasn’t among the 25,000 people who showed up for that. But I saw the pictures. And I’ve heard the stories about “The Salem VA” throughout the decades following that historic dedication on October 19, 1934.

My connection to this rather picturesque campus is one of geographic proximity (I drive by it practically every day), a few old salts I know who visit the medical center, the recreation league softball games we held there, and the seasonal excursions to the nursery (no longer there) to pick up some well-nurtured plants for our landscaping. It is quite the campus; and it has hosted a lot of feet shuffling around the grounds and through the three-dozen buildings over its near nine-decade history. (I also envied the brick and metal rail fencing they erected around the acreage a few years back, thinking how provincial it would be to have my own home front encircled with such a fortified presence.)

Well, there is one other connection I have to the Salem VA. A connection that immediately surfaced in my mind upon the news (March 14) that the Department of Veterans Affairs released a 52-page report recommending the possible closing of outdated facilities—our Salem VA among them. We have reported on many activities at the campus over the years; and most of it, involved the construction sector. It’s true. We’ve written more about construction and maintenance projects at the Salem VA over our 33 years of business coverage than we have the medical, administrative, or personnel services themselves.

The infrastructure indeed, has its issues. But who among us hasn’t noticed other historical campuses that are—somehow surviving? Campuses far more expansive. Campuses much older. Campuses with multifunctional services. Even historic campuses with more foot traffic and heavy use in a single quarter than the Salem VA ever experienced over its entire lifetime.

So, what’s the difference here? Is it management? Yes. But it’s deeper than that.

It’s systemic.

Perhaps we should have reported something more in all our stories on the various contractors and projects at the Salem VA. Because there’s a bit of a dirty little secret.

Contractors (our local ones and outsiders) loved getting a project awarded by the VA. Even if they had to be the lowest