Allan Appel Photo
Danger zone: Navigating treacherous Hil Health parking-lot trek.
Cornell Scott Hill Health Center CEO Michael Taylor announced that all center employees now earn at least $16 an hour — well ahead of the state’s gradual transition to $15.
Meanwhile, Taylor worries that one of his center’s staffers or hundreds of daily patients will be hit by cars blowing through the crosswalk in front of the Columbus Avenue main entrance.
Taylor expressed both sentiments during the Hill North Community Management Team’s (HNCMT) first meeting of 2020. About 30 people attended the meeting last week at the John C. Daniels International Communications School on Congress Avenue.
CEO Taylor (at right) with Shawn Galligan, Hill Health’s director of purchasing and facilities development..
Taylor made his remarks in the context of HNCMT Chair Howard Boyd summarizing the challenges for the neighborhood in 2019, looking forward to the coming year.
“This is 2020, and we’re stepping up,” Boyd reported. “There have been lots of tragedies here. People have been shot. But we’re stepping up so kids can go libraries, after-school programs, or to the gym instead of staying home” out of fear.
“We already had an incident,” Taylor said, referring to a staffer who was seriously injured in front of Hill Health last spring. “I’m really concerned someone [else] will be hit,” he said.
As the HNCMT organizes its priorities for 2020, Taylor asked its support for a flashing-light beacon to augment the faded white painted crosswalk connecting the front of the center to one of the large parking lots.
“Anything you can do to get us flashing lights” will be appreciated, he said to the team’s officials.
Taylor was referring to pedestrian-activated “regular rapid flash beacons” of the kind that have been installed in recent years on Olive Street and York Street.
Taylor said he has been in touch numerous times on the matter with the city’s Department of Traffic, Transportation, and Parking. He fears the issue might have fallen between the cracks.
Long-time Hill resident Dora Brown, a careful driver, corroborated Taylor’s assessment that the crosswalk is insufficient and that a dangerous situation looms thanks to cars speeding among street-crossing patients, some of whom may be distracted by just-concluded medical appointments.
“When I drive through there, I crawl,” she said.
There’s a crosswalk, but people blow through it, Taylor added.
LCI Staffer Artie Natalino and Hill North Chair Howard Boyd listen to neighbors.
Government Livable City Initiative (LCI) staffer Artie Natalino, Jr. urged Taylor to place the issue on the SeeClickFix problem-solving website. Taylor said he has. Then Natalino promised to pursue the matter with Traffic & Parking.
On the happier note of the new minimum wage, Taylor said he is proud of the center’s competitive pay scale, especially at a time when the state is scheduled to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, and that only in 2023.
“When our center does well, we raise all the ships”, he said. “Our goal is $20 per hour. We’re thrilled to have done it for the staff and the community at large.”
Taylor also announced that 50 methadone patients the center’s staff had been treating have recently been transferred for care to Ansonia, closer to their home communities.
That news was also well received. The center last year faced vigorous community opposition, spearheaded by the management team, to its plans to expand its addiction treatment facility on Cedar Street.